


Null and Void

by Energybeing



Series: Stars Hollow [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls
Genre: Comedy, F/M, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 43,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4911997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Energybeing/pseuds/Energybeing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Wesley turned up in Connecticut, Xander was sure that Wolfram and Hart was up to something. As it turned out, someone else was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to ‘Fun and Games’, and the fourth instalment in this series. It won’t make a great deal of sense unless you’ve read the preceeding works, so I suggest you do.
> 
> This story is a Buffy, Angel and Gilmore Girls crossover. Sadly, I do not own these shows. Please don’t sue me for using them. This is set post-‘Chosen’ in Buffy, early season 5 for Gilmore Girls and just after ‘Lineage’ in Angel.

fter Wesley left Sunnydale, he never had even the slightest inclination to keep in contact with anyone he’d met there. He had no illusions about how they remembered him. In fact, when he remembered what he had been like back then he cringed so hard that his face hurt.

That had changed, when he had found out that Fred had contacted Willow in order to enlist her help to resoul Angel. It had occurred to him that knowing what a Slayer, a powerful witch and her support group were up to was a very useful thing. Even if they remembered him as the most useless person on the face of the planet.

So, once he had become Head of Research and Intelligence at Wolfram and Hart, Wesley had kept tabs on the new Watcher’s Council. He’d thought that knowing what an army of Slayers was up to at any given point could only be a good thing.

However, he had never given much thought about what he would actually do with this information. He knew it could be useful, especially when they actually tried to bring down Wolfram and Hart, but beyond that he was just collecting it.

That changed, however, once Wesley had shot the cyborg that he had been utterly convinced was his father.

He didn’t want to contact the Slayers in order to find out who the cyborgs had been working for, though. His desire was more personal than that.

It had recently come to his attention that Xander had finished building a convalescence home for Slayers and Watchers in Connecticut. It seemed like the perfect place to go for someone who was getting over the fact that he had thought he’d committed patricide. He was, after all, an ex-Watcher. He was certain that he fit the criteria for admittance.

However, his information hadn't extended to contact information. In fact, the building, going by the codename ‘Coffee Lion House’, had been incredibly well hidden. He could understand why. A place filled with recovering Slayers would be the perfect target for anyone with a grudge against the Council. If it hadn't been for his vast resources, he doubted he’d have been able to find anything about it at all.

As a result, he didn’t contact Xander before he packed his bags for a stay in Connecticut.

~*~

When Wesley arrived at Coffee Lion House, he was surprised to see the place strewn with Halloween decorations. Halloween had happened more than two weeks earlier – which Wesley doubted he’d ever forget, after the incident with Lorne. It wasn’t just laziness, either – he could see a few people around in costumes, putting up even more decorations.

His thoughts on this were promptly interrupted when he felt someone put a hand on his shoulder. Only the fact that he was surrounded by people, some of whom were obviously Slayers, prevented him from spinning around and breaking that person’s wrist. Wesley didn’t like being surprised.

Instead, he simply turned and saw Xander standing behind him, frowning. Not that Wesley was particularly bothered about the frown. His attention was more immediately preoccupied with the fact that Xander was wearing a white robe, sandals and what looked remarkably like a circlet of thorns.

“Hello Wesley, nice to see you, Wolfram and Hart aren’t welcome here, stop trying to ruin my Halloween party, go away now, have a nice day.” Xander said, all in one breath.

“Why are you dressed as Jesus?” Wesley asked. He hadn't listened to a word Xander had said.

Xander frown deepened, and Wesley got the strong impression that that wasn’t the first time that Xander had been asked that question. “I’m not Jesus! I’m Valley Jesus. Totally different. This is a designer robe, you know.”

Wesley decided not to question that. He was vaguely entertaining the thought that he might have lost his mind after he had shot his father, because that sentence had been lacking all kinds of sense. Probably best to ignore it. “So, can I have a room or should I have booked?”

“A room? You do know that you work for an evil law firm that wants to start the apocalypse, don’t you? Jeez, Wesley, I know you were inept, but your planning skills need a lot of work if you thought you’d get in with that.”

And again with the sentence that made no sense! It seemed almost as though Xander’s statements were missing half of what they needed to make sense. “What are you talking about?”

“You. Work. For. Bad. Guys. We. Don’t. Capisce?” Xander said, as though talking to an idiot. “You guys have been on our no flight list since you joined Wolfram & Hart.”

Suddenly, understanding dawned. Xander thought that Wesley was evil, because of who he worked for. They didn’t know that they planned to bring down the organisation from within. “You do know that you’re working for the organisation that ran the Cruciamentum for centuries, don’t you?” seeing Xander’s blank look, Wesley rolled his eyes. “You’d probably call it ‘that time when Buffy, like, totally almost died when she was, like, 18.’”

Xander grinned despite himself. “Your accent needs a little work. You’ve been living in California for, what, five, six years now? I’d have thought you’d have figured out how we speak by now.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” Wesley said drily.

“I don’t get your point, though.”

“Well, you work for an organisation that was perfectly content to mistreat Slayers and expose them to unnecessary dangers. The Council wasn’t outright evil, but it wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue either.” Xander nodded. That much was true. “Wolfram and Hart is worse. We’ve been trying to bring them down for years, and although we’ve foiled some of their plans they’re still much, much stronger than we are. So, given that we couldn’t take it down from the outside, we thought we’d try from within.” Wesley finished. Then he frowned. “I’m kind of surprised that you thought we’d turned evil.”

“Your boss is a 250 year old vampire with a tendency to go psychotic and kill people. Really wasn’t that much of a stretch.” Xander pointed out. Wesley thought about protesting, but then thought about the incident with Willow and decided that Xander had a point there. “Besides, taking an organisation from the inside doesn’t ever work. Don’t you even watch TV? You’ll end up getting compromised.”

Wesley looked at him steadily. “You know that we’re not in a TV programme, right?”

Xander made a mental note to introduce Wesley to Andrew at some point. “Still, how do I know that this isn’t some evil cunning ploy you guys have come up with to, uh, gain our trust and then bring us down?”

Wesley sighed. “Yesterday, I killed a cyborg who I was absolutely certain was my father. I don’t have even the slightest inclination to indulge in espionage. If you say I can’t stay here, then I’ll leave. I came because this place seems perfect for someone like me, but just say the word and I’m off.”

Xander’s frown didn’t smooth out, and his gaze didn’t soften. He also didn’t immediately summon some Slayers to throw Wesley out. “Cyborg, huh? What was it like?”

Wesley shrugged. “They wore masks, mostly. Beneath that they looked human but kind of burnt. The one who looked like my father must’ve had some sort of sophisticated glamour, because none of our spell warding at the office caught it.”

“That’s them.” A voice said from behind Wesley. He turned to see a girl, a Slayer, with a fierce expression on her face.

“Are you sure, Shannon?” Xander asked gently.

“Yes. I killed one of them, and they looked like that. They’re the ones who killed my Watcher.” Shannon said.

Xander turned back to Wesley. “Well, then. I guess you might not be up to something after all.”

~*~

A little while later, once Xander had conclusively decided to allow Wesley to stay, at least for the time being, Wesley said “So, you’ve been attacked by the cyborgs too.”

It hadn't been a question, but Xander decided to take it as one. “Shannon has. A couple of them broke into the place where she and her Watcher were staying. She killed one, and the other got away, but not before her Watcher was killed. Never did figure out what they were after. We meant to look into it, but we’re more concerned with-“ Xander cut off suddenly. “Never mind.”

Wesley understood. He wasn’t completely trusted. He understood that. He wasn’t he most trusting of people, either.

“Anyway.” Xander said brightly, obviously wanting to change the subject. “Let me show you around.”

They went up a flight of stairs. “Here’s the-“ Xander began, only to be interrupted when something went flying past his ear.

“What have I told you about throwing javelins in the hall, Lizzie?” Xander yelled without turning around. 

A guilty looking girl poked her head around the corner. “Sorry, Xander. Once I throw it, it’s out of my hands.”

Xander sighed. “Yes, Lizzie, that’s what throwing means. Don’t do it again, okay? I’m sure there’s some Watcher around who wouldn’t mind spelling your hands so that you can’t throw anything. We have a javelin range for a reason, you know.”

Lizzie apologized again and then scampered away. “Sorry about that. Girl loves her javelins. You might want to reconsider staying here – the Slayers are a rowdy bunch and the Watchers aren’t much better. There’s usually at least one full-scale battle in the hallway every day.”

Wesley smiled faintly. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.” He didn’t want a relaxing time. He just wanted to be away from LA.

They went fully into the corridor, and Xander pointed at an ornate object protruding from the wall. It looked almost like a sundial, except it had three indentations instead of a dial and considerably more than 12 markings around the edge. “This is Willow’s work. We call it the TARDIS, because it means you can make the corridor bigger on the inside. Watch.” Xander put three of his fingers into his indentations and then turned them to the right. There was a click, and then the end of the corridor shimmered like a heat mirage. When it stopped, it was longer than it had been before. “Took her a long time to figure that out. Magic doesn’t work quite right around here, for some reason. And before you go all librarian on it, Giles has been trying to figure out why for months now and hasn’t gotten anywhere. I doubt you will either.”

Wesley decided not the mention all the resources he had at his disposal thanks to Wolfram and Hart.

“Anyway, that’s your room, back there.” Xander gestured. “Oh, and before I forget, we’re having a Halloween party here later. I suggest that you get your own costume. If you don’t, I'm pretty sure that the girls will make you one and force you into it. You could go as Clint Eastwood. You’ve got the unshaven squinty gunslinger feel to you.”

Wesley decided that he should avoid the party at all costs.

“Everyone!” Xander called. “We’ve got a new guest! Come meet Wesley!”

Faster than Wesley would’ve thought possible, the corridor was filled with people saying variations of the theme of “Hi, Wesley!” Wesley began to think that, while he didn’t want a relaxing time, he also didn’t really want to be surrounded by raucous teenagers. He hadn't done well at Sunnydale, he doubted he’d be any better here. 

Fortunately, he was saved from having to say something when a boy at the back of the crowd spread his hands and summoned a firework which exploded against the ceiling. Besides the deafening bang, it was harmless, but it still set off the sprinklers.

“Sam! No more magic for you!” Xander admonished the now-drenched young man.

Wesley smiled slightly. He supposed that this would be a good environment to get over something. He’d already been narrowly missed by a javelin and soaked by sprinklers. He doubted he would have much time to think about his father.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Out of interest, for all of you who don’t know the Monster Mash (and I can't really blame you, if you don’t) here’s a link so you can watch the [graveyard smash](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxcM3nCsglA).

Angel had faced some scary things in his time. He was a 250-year-old vampire. Of course he had.

None of them, however, quite matched up to an irate Fred, still recovering from being shot, standing in his office and berating him for not knowing where Wesley was. 

Angel hadn't asked where Wesley had gone. He remembered what it was to commit atrocities. He also could bring himself to care what someone who had kidnapped his son did, even if that had been years ago and, in a manner of speaking, hadn’t actually happened.

In the end, though, he promised Fred (profusely, several times) that he would do everything in his power to figure out where Wesley had gone. After all, he had a law firm to run, people to help, Spike to get annoyed by. Being yelled at didn’t really fit into his plans.

~*~

“And so it came to pass that Valley Jesus stood before his disciples.” Xander said in what he hoped was a grand voice. Judging by the looks, it looked more like people thought he had a cold. “And he spoke unto them, saying “Yea, verily. Sammy, you’d bloody better dry everything off or else so help me Valley Father, I will smite thee mightily.”

“What happened to no more magic?” Sam said, grinning. Sam wasn’t a particularly powerful warlock, but the gifts he did have were almost solely in fire magic. With everything dripping wet, he was the best bet to dry things.

“Do not question Valley Jesus. Just do it, or else I’ll leave it to the girls to come up with some suitable punishment for you.”

Seeing the boy’s sudden change from amused to almost panicking, Wesley guessed that that was no idle threat. He wondered exactly what they might they might have come up with, and if he actually wanted to know.

Lizzie sidled up to him. “So, what’s up with the guns?”

Wesley blinked, quickly checking himself to see if the guns he had secreted about his person had suddenly become visible in the deluge. They hadn't. Seeing his expression, Lizzie added “I _am_ a Slayer, you know. I wouldn’t be much good if I couldn’t spot a concealed weapon. But why guns? Buffy says that they’re no good against demons.”

This wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. Admittedly, guns wouldn’t kill a vampire unless you had one big enough to blow its head off, it would definitely slow them down. However, most demons a Slayer was likely to face wouldn’t even slow down for a handgun. On top of that, they were hardly the most secretive of weapons for a group of people who did a job that most people never even knew needed doing. Wesley carried them because, while they weren’t much good against out and out demons, they weren’t the only things that he had to face.

Wesley shrugged. “All sorts of reasons.”

Another Slayer stood next to Lizzie. “Oh, are you going as a gunslinger or something to the party? That would be so cool.”

“Actually, I wasn’t-“

“With that accent, you could definitely pull of Bond. James Bond.” another Slayer said thoughtfully.

“I wasn’t planning on going to the party.”

The Slayers looked like they hadn't even contemplated that possibility. Wesley wondered briefly exactly how many of them had ever met Buffy. It wasn’t hard to imagine her acting in the same way. He wondered if she had changed at all.

“Okay, girls.” Xander ambled over. Sam had dried him off, but his spell had accidentally made Xander’s hair stick straight up like he’d been electrocuted. Given that it hadn't happened to anyone else, Xander couldn’t help but think that he’d done it on purpose. He was thankful that he had short hair. Also that Lorelai wasn’t around, or else she would be laughing for weeks. “Scram. Leave the man alone. If he wants to be intensely private stay-at-home, that’s his right.” Wesley got the feeling that he was being subtly made fun of.

Reluctantly, the Slayers left him alone. “You _really_ shouldn’t have said that you weren’t going. I'm pretty sure that you're going to make you their latest project.”

Wesley looked at him, nonplussed. Seeing his expression, Xander said “You see that guy over there?” Xander pointed to a young Watcher waiting for Sam to get round to him. “He made some kind of quip about Slayers. For a week after that he wore makeup. He looked like a lopsided panda.”

Wesley blanched. “Th-that’s diabolical.”

“Hilarious is what it is. I did say they'd probably stuff you into a costume.”

Wesley wondered if he could make a run for it. If he left now… “Shouldn’t you stop that kind of thing?”

“Nah.” Xander said. He seemed a little surprised that Wesley was even asking. “They’re here so they can experience normal town life and do the normal things that teenagers do. Including, you know, pranking each other and generally being delinquent.”

~*~

In Luke’s diner, there was a figure sitting at the bar. It had been for half an hour, during which time it hadn't moved at all. It was swathed in a dark robe, but the little that could be seen of the hands were quite literally skeletal and the face under the hood was that of an exceptionally realistic skull. However, the diner was busy at the moment and neither Luke nor Jess had had time to make their way around to it. Jess suspected that Luke was hoping that it would either leave or Jess would cave and go ask what it wanted.

Eventually, during a lull, Jess went and did just that. “Hey, Dawn. Whatcha doin’?”

The figure slumped. “Aw. How’d you know it was me?”

Jess scratched his head. “Well, Lorelai doesn’t have the patience to sit like that, and Kirk’s sitting over there. It wasn’t all that hard to make the leap.”

“Huh.” Dawn was a little disappointed. She’d noticed that she hadn't been getting nearly as many strange looks as she had expected. Back in Sunnydale, she probably would have had half a dozen vamps come up to her and ask what she wanted by now, as well as visit by Buffy. Here, besides a few staring children, she was being mainly ignored.

“Well, I'd get you coffee, but I think that you’d probably have a little trouble drinking it with that mask on.” Jess said. “So, assuming that you aren’t here to show off your costume, what do you want?”

“I can't just drop by and try and scare the living daylights out of my boyfriend?”

“I hate to break it to you, Dawn, but sitting still isn’t really that scary.” Jess smirked.

“I’d stick my tongue out at you, but it doesn’t really work in this mask.” Dawn grumbled. “Anyway, I was going to ask if you’re going to the party later.”

“Lorelai owes me a dollar.”

Dawn blinked. “What kind of answer is that?”

“She bet that you wouldn’t ask me. You know, because social gatherings aren’t really my thing.”

This was true, Dawn reflected. Jess wasn’t exactly the most sociable of people. He got on well with her and Luke, even Rory when they forgot their past. He managed to be civil to Lorelai, now that he wasn’t dating her daughter, and (mainly thanks to Dawn’s efforts) he could stand to be in the same room as Xander without there being some kind of fight. Other than that, though, Jess tended to ignore everyone, or be incredibly surly when he did deign to speak to them.

On the other hand, Dawn hadn't properly celebrated Halloween since she had lived in LA, and she hadn't even _existed_ back then. She wasn’t going to miss this, and she was definitely going to celebrate it with her boyfriend.

“Oh, come on.”

“Wow. You certainly do make a persuasive argument.” Jess said dryly.

“Smartass.”

“Why, thank you, dear lady. You’re too kind.”

“So, you're coming then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say no, either.” Dawn pointed out.

“In some circumstances, a sarcastic response is considered to be a no.”

“Was it a no?”

“No.”

“Is that a no, you're not, or a no, it wasn’t?”

“Well, no is clearly both no and no.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” An exasperated Luke called from across the room. “Of course he's coming. He's got his costume ready and everything. He’s just teasing ‘cause you waited this long to ask.”

“Oh!” the skeletal figure slapped Jess’ arm in mock indignation. “You, sir, are a costume tease!”

~*~

Xander was in the hall which had been liberally strewn with Halloween decorations, watching people come streaming in for the party. He’d been worried that the decorations that the Slayers had thought were scary might possibly give some people heart attacks, but they seemed to be going down well. At least Taylor hadn't shown up to protest them yet.

“She’ll be along in a bit.” a voice said behind him. Xander turned to see Rory’s friend Lane standing behind him. She was dressed as Jimi Hendrix, which she carried off surprisingly well given that she was a diminutive Korean. “Rory, I mean.”

Xander grinned. “I know. I’ve been trying to get her to tell me what her costume is all week. I'm dying of anticipation.”

“Well, if anyone could, it would be you.” Lane said, smiling.

“Do you know if Lorelai’s coming?”

“Depends on if she can wheedle Luke into coming.”

Xander smiled faintly. “So when are they coming?”

Lane shrugged. Like Xander, she didn’t doubt Lorelai’s ability to convince Luke to do just about anything.

“Your costume’s pretty go-“ Xander trailed off, looking at something behind Lane’s shoulder. As she turned around to see what had bothered him so much, Xander realised that he’d stopped speaking. He finished his sentence. Or he tried to, at least. The best he managed to say was “Wstfgl.”

The reason for this was that Rory had just walked in. She was dressed as Batwoman. Or possibly Batgirl. His encyclopaedic knowledge of comics had temporarily failed in the face of that costume. He was surprised that he was still able to think at all.

It wasn’t the most revealing of costumes. Most of the Slayers were showing more skin. But it was Bat… somebody. Rory knew he loved that comic. Plus she looked really hot. And she was his girlfriend.

Lane smirked. “I’ll be off then.” Xander didn’t hear her, or notice her leave. His brain had short-circuited.

Rory ambled over. “Hi.”

“Morning.” Xander said. “Uh, evening, I mean. I think.”

“You alright there?”

“Uh huh. Wish you’d given me a little warning on the costume front though, Ro-Gil.”

Rory tilted her head. “Why? The surprise is all part of the fun. I should’ve guessed yours, though.”

“Well, I think you might have fried my brain.” Xander said with a slightly glazed look on his face. “It’s a really… good looking costume.”

Rory blinked, and Xander could see a blush creeping around the edge of her mask. Rory wasn’t exactly a shy girl, he knew. If you got to know her, you’d quickly see that. On the other hand, unlike Cordelia who would’ve walked into the party wearing that costume in the sure and certain knowledge of what it would do to every hot-blooded male, Rory hadn't thought like that. It hadn't occurred to her. She’d just worn the costume because she knew that Xander would like it.

She grabbed some punch from a passing person to hide her confusion. The man looked like he was going to protest, but decided against it. Thou shalt not start an argument in front of Valley Jesus. Xander, who’d been holding a cup of punch since shortly before Lane’s appearance, took a sip and made a face. “Someone’s spiked this.”

Rory, who’d just taken a rather large gulp of it, looked at it in concern. “Really? I can't taste anything.”

“It’s faint. I guess I only picked up on it because I'm part fish.”

Rory looked at him thoughtfully. “Fish aren’t known for having a good sense of taste. I mean… oh, you know what I mean.”

“Well, I’ve been told before that my fashion sense isn’t that great.” Xander said, with a grin. “By the way, are you Batgirl or Batwoman? I’ve been trying to figure it out.”

Rory shrugged. “I don’t know. I just asked the costume guy for a female Batman costume and got this. I didn’t even know that there was a Batgirl or Batwoman.”

Xander gave a minute sigh of relief. His comic knowledge hadn't actually failed him. He’d been toying with the idea that Rory was Batgirl and Lorelai would show up as Batwoman. He was pretty sure that he would literally explode if that happened. “Comics are just as much literature as Kafka and that other stuff you study, you know. You should try them sometime.”

“Nah.” Rory waved a hand. “Not really my thing.”

“Snob.”

Rory paused in act of sticking her tongue out at him (which looked rather odd) because someone had just started up the music. “Oh! It’s the Monster Mash!”

Xander nodded. “You want to go and flail around in an uncoordinated fashion? I mean dance?”

“I remember, one Halloween, Mom dressed up as a mummy and had this song on loop so that every time the trick-or-treaters came round they were greeted by a dancing mummy, with bandages going everywhere. I hear it was terrifying. Sure, let’s go flail.”

“Sure thing, Batman.”

So, taking her arm, the pair went out onto the dance floor, ready to flail the night away.


	3. Chapter Three

Dawn was in the middle of a conversation with Béatrice, a Slayer from Montreal that had arrived a couple of days ago (she was trying to remember the French for “Have you slain any interesting vampires recently?"), when she spotted someone familiar. She blinked, looked again, sure that she was mistaken, but the second glance proved her right. It was Wesley.

“Wesley?’ Dawn asked in surprise.

Wesley turned and looked at her. After a couple of moments, he said “Dawn?” uncertainly. Dawn had been about twelve when he’d last seen her. She’d grown a lot since then. And then there was her costume. The costume was definitely distracting.

“What are you doing here?”

Wesley looked down at himself. He was wearing a suit, even though he wasn’t really the sort of person who wore suits these days. A suit was nevertheless just something you had to have. “Being James Bond, I think. They weren’t exactly clear on that point.”

Dawn thought about asking what he was talking about, but then decided against it. When someone from Wolfram & Hart shows up at your Halloween party, asking about their costume wasn’t exactly a priority. “I mean what are _you_ doing _here_? Shouldn’t you be, oh, being evil and charging innocent people exorbitant legal fees? I guess that’s just being a lawyer. Being an evil extortionist is just your job.”

“I’m Head of Research. I just figure out the most dastardly modern ways to make people pay through the nose.” Wesley said drily. He shouldn’t be surprised, he supposed. Xander had reacted in much the same way. But Dawn had been so young when he’s last seen her, and Buffy had done her utmost to make sure that she had as little involvement in her Slaying duties as possible. Being reprimanded by her now was odd. The surreal setting didn’t help much. Neither did the costume, come to think of it. “Actually, Xander said I could be here.”

“Oh yeah? How’d you bamboozle him into that?”

“I told him I shot my father.”

Dawn went very still, and Wesley suddenly remembered that her own mother had died a few years ago. He had only said that in order to make her stop talking, but he guessed he’d touched a nerve. “It wasn’t really my father.” He added hurriedly. “I just thought he was, at the time. Turned out he was a cyborg with a sophisticated glamour. Still shot him, though. This place is for people who’ve been through traumatic stuff, right?”

“Yeah, for _good guys_ who’ve been through traumatic stuff.” Dawn said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“We’re still the good guys, you know.” Wesley said gently.

“Yeah, that’s what you would – oh, enough with the banter, I can’t get past the fact that you shot your father. _Why_ would you?”

Wesley gave an uncomfortable shrug. “He was going to kill someone that I cared about.”

“Right.” Dawn looked a little disconcerted. Understandably so. “Okay. That makes sense.” She didn’t sound sure.

Wesley didn’t say anything. What could he possible say?

Dawn shook her head slightly, as though to clear the entire conversation from her mind. “So, you’re the good guys, huh? How does that work, when you’ve been given a nice cushy job working for the bad guys?”

Wesley shrugged again. He was on familiar ground now. “We’re planning on bringing them down from the inside.”

Dawn nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. So you're going to arrange some kind of massive PR scandal that will ruin Wolfram and Hart’s reputation so that no one, no matter how evil, would even think of going to them?”

Wesley stared at her. “No…”

“You’re going to fire your work force and spend your annual budget developing a robotic lawyer, only to see it fail miserably and force the company to pay billions to bail you out?”

“No…”

“So what are you going to do, then?” Dawn said, crossing her arms. “Make Angel singing Barry Manilow become required listening? I guarantee the company will go under in days if you do.”

Wesley scratched his head. “No, we’re going to… um…”

“Come up with a plan?” Dawn suggested sarcastically.

“I guess we are kind of making it up as we go along.” Wesley admitted.

“Well, acceptance is the first step.”

~*~

Xander was in the middle of a rather complicated flail when he paused, shocked, before bursting out laughing. Rory was understandably taken aback by this. If there was anything to burst out laughing about, she would have thought that Xander flailing would be right at the top of the list. That is, until she turned around and saw what Xander saw. She couldn’t help but grin.

Luke and Lorelai had arrived. 

Although no power on Earth (not even Lorelai) could make Luke Danes change his customary outfit of jeans, plaid shirt and backwards baseball cap, Lorelai had taken the opportunity to dress up with relish. She had, in fact, dressed up as Luke Danes. She was even wearing the same baseball cap. Luke looked resigned about this, while Lorelai was grinning like a pumpkin.

“Hey, Mom!” Rory waved them over. “Nice costume!”

“Costume? What costume? This is how I normally dress!” Lorelai said gruffly. Apparently it wasn’t enough for her just to dress like Luke – she was speaking like him, too. It wasn’t a bad impression, either.

“Well, Luke and… Luke, I'm glad you could make it.” Xander said, smiling.

Before either of the Lukes could respond, the doors swung open with a resounding crash. The music stopped with a squeal, and the lights flickered and went out. A figure stood in the doorway, lit from behind. It was difficult to make out any details, but it seemed to be wrapped in some sort of dark robe with a long, metallic beak protruding from the hood. It tilted its head backward and let out a chilling laugh. A shiver went up Rory’s spine.

“Xan, I thought demons couldn’t come to Stars Hollow?” Rory whispered, so that her mom wouldn’t overhear.

“That’s no demon.” Xander whispered back. “Just wait a couple of seconds.”

The lights came back on, and the figure removed the metallic, beak-like mask, revealing Jess underneath. He made a theatrical bow. There was stunned silence, for a few seconds, followed by thunderous applause.

~*~

Jess made his way through the crowd to Dawn, his mask under his arm. “That, my dear, is how you scare the life out of someone.”

Dawn, who had seen (almost literally) a hell of lot of scarier things just nodded and asked “How did you sort out the lights and the music?”

Jess shrugged under his robe. “Bribery gets you almost everywhere.”

“That’s not actually how the saying goes, you know.” Dawn said mildly. At least that explained why Jess hadn’t been buried under half a dozen Slayers the moment he’d come in. Whoever he’d told had probably made sure that everyone knew he wasn’t actually a demon.

“Well, it works just as well.” Jess replied.

“Nice costume, though.” Dawn remarked. “What is it, some kind of plague doctor?”

“Something like that.” Jess responded. “I see you’ve changed your costume, though. What was wrong with your skeleton outfit?”

Dawn had changed her costume. She was now wearing a rather formfitting grey one piece, little ears perched on top of her head and something that looked remarkably like a tail coiled around one arm so that it didn’t drag along the floor behind her. “What do you think?” she said, striking a pose.

“I like it.” Jess said, looking her over. “Largely for reasons I probably shouldn’t mention in polite company. It’s not exactly a Halloween costume, though. What are you meant to be?”

“ _Sono una topa_.”

Jess expression suddenly went blank. “You’re still learning Italian, I see.”

“Yup.”

“How’s that going?”

“Oh, not that bad. I haven’t got that far, but then, I haven’t been learning it long. It’s easier than Turkish, though.”

“I should probably mention that… what you said doesn’t actually mean what you think it means.”

“It doesn’t mean ‘I’m a mouse’?” Dawn said, frowning.

“Not… exactly. See, _topa_ is slang for, um… yeah, I probably shouldn’t tell you what its slang for, because you’ll blush and run away.” Dawn blushed. “Yeah, there you go. Why a mouse, anyway?”

“I'm reliably informed that girls should use Halloween as an opportunity to dress up as sexy animals.”

Jess blinked. “Who, exactly, is your reliable informant?”

“Mean Girls.”

Jess looked blank again, this time for an entirely different reason. “What?”

“It’s a film, came out… oh, about six months ago now.” Faith had taken her and the Potentials to see it to take their minds off the upcoming apocalypse. “I don’t get how it is that you can have read basically every book ever written and know such a lot about music but not have seen Mean Girls.”

Jess shrugged. “Films aren’t really my thing.”

~*~

Later, after the party had ended, Rory and Xander were headed home when she suddenly asked “Are you really part fish?”

“Just a little bit. I had a coach who thought it was a good idea to genetically modify his swim team.”

“You were on the swim team?”

“That’s what you took from what I just said?”

“What? You're not exactly the swim team type, are you? Anyway, why didn’t you tell me you were part fish?

“It’s not really the sort of thing that you advertise, Rory. ‘sides, human-nonhuman relationships don’t really end all that well.”

“Yeah, but you’re still human, though.”

“Nah, I'm Aquaman.”

“I thought you were Batman.”

Xander thought for a moment, before saying somewhat uncertainly “Underwater bats?”

Rory snorted. “Nice try.”

“Oh, wait, I’ve got it: flying fish!”

“Okay, I’ll let you have that one. Just because Dracula would be so much funnier if he could turn into a pile of fish that just flopped around.” Rory said. “Anyway, you live that way.”

“I know, but you don’t. I'm doing the gentlemanly thing and walking you home.” Xander said.

“But your home’s nearer.” Rory pointed out.

“Yeah, but you walking me to my house kind of ruins the whole gentlemanly thing, though.”

“Alright then.” Rory said, with a small sigh. “Take me away!”

Before Xander could reply, his cell rang. “It’s Buffy.”

“Something’s going on, isn’t it?” Rory said, shrewdly. “Something about that vampire in New York.”

“Something like that.” Xander agreed. “Don’t worry about it, though. I'm retired from all that. Buffy’s just filling me in. I'm not going to go gallivanting off to do battle with the forces of evil.”

“You just had to say that, didn’t you? Now you’ve jinxed it!”

Xander frowned. “You might have a point. Anyway, don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”

“Shouldn’t you pick up the phone now?” Rory asked, deciding not to mention that the last time there had been an apocalypse she’d thought that he was dead for months, and before that his best friend had given him a massive scar on his chest.

“Right, yeah. Um, would you mind, uh…”

“What? Oh, yeah, sure.” Rory said, turning to walk home. She didn’t want to get involved in that world. Last time she had, she’d been turned into a vampire. “You can do the gentlemanly thing some other time.”

Xander smiled, and then answered the phone. “Hey, Buff.”

“Hi. How was the party?” Buffy asked.

“Oh, it was good. Just don’t ask me about Dawn’s costume.” Xander replied. He knew that Dawn wasn’t exactly a child now, but he still didn’t think her costume had been entirely suitable.

There was a pause. “I wasn’t going to ask about her costume.”

“Well, everything’s okay then, isn’t it?”

“What, exactly, about her costume shouldn’t I be asking?”

“I thought the whole point that you wouldn’t be asking anything about it at all.” Xander said. “Anyway, I don’t think you called just so that you could not ask me about Dawn’s costume. What’s happened?”

Buffy sighed. “We got hit again.”

“Still vampires? No one’s invited them in?”

“Exactly. Giles is trying to figure out how they’re doing it, and Will’s trying to figure out how she’d do it if she was, you know, evil. The best that they’ve come up with is that the barrier that keeps vampires out is mystical and was disturbed by the Sunnydale Hellmouth going kaput.”

“Great. So we save the world, and now vampires can entre uninvited.” Xander rolled his eyes. “Just our luck.”

“The problem with that theory is, as best as we can tell, we’re the only places that have been hit. There haven’t been any vampire killing sprees. At least, we haven’t heard of any.”

“And if there were any to hear of, we would’ve. Where were we hit this time?”

“Sydney.”

“Like Australia Sydney? Since when did we have an outpost Down Under?”

“Only recently. We’ve heard that there was something weird going on, so we sent half a dozen Slayers down there to see if we could find out what.”

“Someone’s trying to work out what happened to Oceanic Flight 815, huh?” Xander guessed.

“Har de har har.”

“So, who knew we were down there?”

“Me, Will, Giles and Robin. Probably Faith, too, depending on how much those two share.”

“They’re still going?” Xander said with some surprise.

“Yeah.”

“So, just them then?” Xander said. He couldn’t imagine any of them being the leak.

“Well, there’s the Slayers we sent, of course. And, uh…”

“Spill it, Buff.” Xander said. Not that he hadn't already guessed. There was only one person that was even remotely affiliated with the Council that Buffy wouldn’t want to mention to him.

“Ethan.” Buffy volunteered grudgingly.

“Why don’t you ship that slimy limey down here, then? I can guarantee that I can arrange some sort of accident, and then everything’ll be just peachy.”

“You _know_ it isn’t him, Xan. He’s got no magic. Not a drop. He can't even levitate a pencil.”

“Yeah, but he’s got to be involved somehow.” Xander grumbled. Then a thought hit him. “Hang on, Buff. Light bulb moment. Wolfram and Hart?”

“What? You think _Angel_ is behind this?” Buffy said, shocked.

“Why so surprised? It makes sense. Mr Broody McBrooderson is a vampire, after all. It explains why Wesley’s suddenly shown up here. He is a spy! I knew it!”

“Hold on. Wesley’s in Stars Hollow?” Buffy said tensely.

“Yeah. He told me some story about shooting a cyborg that looked like his father, and you know Shannon had her Watcher killed by one of them, so we brought him in.”

“Xan, Wesley _can't_ be there. We made sure to bury every mention of Coffee Lion House. There’s no way that anyone who isn’t part of the Council could know about it.”

“I knew it!” Xander exclaimed. “I knew he was evil, right off the bat. No lawyer is ever a good guy.”

“Except Atticus Finch.”

“What?”

“You know, _To Kill a_ … never mind.”

“Anyway, Buff, I’ve got a lawyer to threaten. Speak to you in a bit. Bye.” Xander hung up.


	4. Chapter Four

Wesley had always been driven. It was how he had managed to become a Watcher, after all, even if he hadn’t been truly qualified for that. It was why he’d been Head Boy, and how it was that it always fell to him to do the research. It wasn’t just that he knew a great deal of things, but he wouldn’t stop digging until he found out exactly what it was that he wanted to know. He didn’t stop working. Yes, Wesley was driven. It had been his father driving him.

Which was why Wesley took an inordinate amount of pleasure in the book that he was reading. It wasn’t a grimoire, or some obscure demonic text. It was a murder mystery. One of the Watchers had lent it to him. It didn’t involve any brain power on his part. He was perfectly content to wait and see who had dunnit, as it were. He had his suspicions, but, and this was the important thing, it didn’t matter in the slightest if he was wrong.

Wesley had just started the second chapter when there came a knocking at his door. He thought about not answering it, but then realised that he didn’t really have anything better to do. This was incredibly enjoyable feeling for someone who had been juggling equally important activities all of which required his immediate attention. So he got up and answered the door.

Xander was standing there, but this wasn’t what immediately grabbed Wesley’s attention. He was more concerned with what Xander was holding. It was a battle-axe. A big, ornate but above all _sharp_ battle-axe.

Xander pointed at the axe. “Do you know what this is?”

Wesley looked at it closely. However, no matter how minutely he examined it, he couldn’t come to any other conclusions. It was a battle-axe. “Is this a trick question?” Wesley asked drily.

Xander sighed. “Do I look like I'm in the mood to ask trick questions?”

Wesley gave this some thought. “Well, yes. You generally do. You usually look like you're ready to make some absurd quip, too. Why?”

“For future reference, this is my serious face. While I'm wearing it, I'm being serious. The things that I say are serious things. Got that?” Xander paused, and then added “Although I'm glad that you’ve notice my ability to drop a quip at the drop of a hat.”

“You know, saying things like that doesn’t really lend your serious face any credibility.” Wesley said gently.

“Yeah, I get that a lot. No one seems to be able to recognise my serious face.” Xander replied. Then he remembered what he had come here for. “Now, do you know what this is? This thing here, which I am holding in my hand. This is not a trick question.”

“Is it a battle-axe?”

Xander looked at the axe in astonishment. “How can you not be sure if it’s an axe or not?”

Wesley shrugged. “I don’t know, I thought that we were playing Jeopardy.”

“Didn’t I mention my serious – wait. Did you just make a joke?”

Wesley grinned. He was normally pretty serious. About as far as he ever went was a sarcastic comment, or the occasional Angel impersonation. But that had been a quip, of the sort that Cordelia might make. He felt rather pleased by this. He was making an effort to unwind (while being fully aware of the inherent irony) and it was working.

Xander changed tack. While he was aware that he could threaten – his track record with vampires and Andrew was pretty high – apparently he couldn’t quite cut it when he was talking to someone who had known him in his younger, even less serious days.

“This is a battle-axe. It’s sharp. It has all the axe-like qualities you could possibly want in an axe. All of which will be used on you if you don’t tell me everything you know.”

“Did you know that there are more life forms living on your skin than there are people on this planet?” Wesley said, wondering what exactly was going on. If this was some kind of initiation ritual, it was really strange.

Xander stared at his hand, and fought down the urge to go and scrub it with bleach. Apparently, he wasn’t any good at threatening people. Either that, or Wesley was completely and utterly clueless, which, if he were honest, wouldn’t come as a huge surprise to him. “Recently, four Slayer outposts have been hit by vampires. And I don’t mean that they lurked outside and ambushed the Slayers when they were left. They broke in. without being invited. There’s no apparent link between the places that were attacked – we’ve been hit in Siberia, New York, Zurich and Sydney. Most of the time, the vampires haven’t actually done anything, they’ve been too surprised that they actually got in, but Siberia… Siberia was a massacre. We didn’t even know what had happened, at first. We thought it was the yetis, because you know what they can be like. But it was vampires. First place we know of that was hit.”

Wesley blinked. “Oh.” Then he realised what Xander was saying, and why he was telling him this, why he’d rather inexpertly threatened him with the axe. “Wait. You think _I_ had something to do with that? Why?”

“You work for an evil law firm and your boss is a vampire. Do I really need to spell it out?” Xander poked Wesley in the chest. “You're a spy. You're here to find out what’s going on so you can report back to Mr Tall, Dark and Psychopathic.”

“It’s not us!” Wesley protested, thinking as he did so that just because the LA branch of Wolfram and Hart hadn't had anything to do with it, that didn’t mean that the organization itself hadn't been involved. He wondered if there were branches near the attack sites. “We’re the good guys!”

“See, I’ve got a bit of a problem with that.” Xander said. “’cause Travers, he thought he was the good guy too. He nearly got Buffy and her mom killed. Went and got a few of his guys killed, too. And _he_ wasn’t working for a demonic law firm that helps thousands of bad guys every year.”

“We took down a ring of gun runners recently. Just a few days ago, actually.” Wesley said coldly. “Couldn’t have done it if we didn’t have Wolfram and Hart’s contacts. Fred got shot, and that was my fault. So, if you want to go down to LA and look her in the eye while her arm is in a goddamn sling and tell her that she’s evil, fine, go ahead. If you think I'm a spy, I’ll leave right now. But that won't change the facts. I'm not the villain here. You’re looking in the wrong place.”

“If it’s not you, then who is it?” Xander said, in what he hoped was a reasonable tone of voice. Truthfully, he was more than a little unsettled. He remembered Wesley as a bumbling fool. He thought that he’d managed to unwind a little, but the Wesley who had spoken just then… well, he wasn’t a bumbling fool. It was kind of scary, actually.

“The thing about running a big company, like the Council or W&H, is that you’ll have enemies. Whole swathes of them. If I were you, I'd go and see if there’s been a group of witches that you’ve ticked off.”  
Xander shook his head. “Nah. Willow can’t do it, and if she can't chances are no one else can, either. Except there’s you guys, and who knows what you can do?”

Wesley decided to let that one pass. “Willow doesn’t know everything there is to know about magic, you know. She might be powerful, but there’s more to magic than that. See, I doubt she would know where to start when it comes to bringing back a vampire who died at the centre of a massive magical convergence, but look what happened there.”

Xander tilted his head to one side. “Who did what now? What are we talking about?”

“Spike.” Wesley said.

“You’re kidding. Someone brought Spike back? Who would do such a thing?”

“We don’t know. Someone brought him back as a ghost. He’s in our offices now, not doing anything much except wondering around making a pest of himself.”

“Yeah, he does that, but-“ a thought hit Xander, and he forced himself not to start swearing. After a few seconds, he managed to limit himself to “Oh, no. Not again.”

“What?”

“Last time that someone was brought back when they shouldn’t have been, it let the First Evil turn up and its minions slaughtered dozens of Potentials and nearly ended the world. This would be just its style. The Ubervamps didn’t need an invitation either. Damn. I really hoped we’d seen the last of that thing.”

“What are you going to do?”

Xander shrugged. “Not a clue. Like you say, we don’t know everything there is to know about magic, but I guess we’re all going to LA. Incidentally, this doesn’t mean that I don’t still think you’re up to something. I just think that someone is more up to something than you are.”

Wesley tried to puzzle his way through that, and gave up. “I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind. I left LA for a reason, you know.”

Xander paused a moment before deciding that, if he was a spy, then the most he would be able to pick up would be the latest fashion tips from the Slayers. “Sure. Do whatever you like.”

Wesley retreated back into his room, and picked his mystery up again.

~*~

Xander headed over to Dawn’s. As he did so, he called everyone he could think off that could possibly be useful if it turned out that the First was back in business and told them to get to LA as fast as demonically possible.

He knocked on Dawn’s door. He didn’t for a moment doubt that she’d still be awake, even though it was still late. The Scoobies were known for many things, but sleeping reasonable hours wasn’t one of them.

Sure enough, moments later Dawn opened the door. Thankfully, she had changed her costume. “Xander?” she said, rubbing her eye with the heel of her hand. “What are you doing here?”

“I have news.” Xander said. “I thought you should be, oh, about the eighth to know.”

“Wow. Thanks a lot. I'm glad I rate so highly.” Dawn said sarcastically. Xander grinned at her. “So, what happened? I'm guessing that there’s been another attack, but what’s so special about it that you felt that you had to come over here at this hour?”

“I have a theory.” Xander said. He paused. He knew that Dawn’s relationship with Spike was rather unusual. She’d had a crush on him, he’d tried to rape her sister, she hadn't ever really forgiven him, and then he’d saved the world. He wasn’t really sure how she felt about him now. He looked for a delicate way to break the news to her.

“If you say bunnies, I swear I’ll scream.” Dawn warned.

“It’s not bunnies. Although you might prefer them, when this is done.” Xander said. “I was just talking to Wes. Apparently, someone’s brought back Spike. You know, from the dead.”

Dawn stood very still. Like Xander before her, she was trying not to swear. Sadly, she didn’t have his self-restraint, and so let loose the rudest swearword in her vocabulary. “Oh, _Belgium_!”

Xander raised an eyebrow at that. “Belgium? Why Belgium?”

Dawn decided not to try and explain Douglas Adams to him. “Never mind that. Who brought Spike back?”

Xander shrugged. “Not sure. Apparently he's haunting W&H in LA at the moment.”

“So, we’re going over there, right?”

“I am. Didn’t think you’d want to, what with school and what’s-his-face.”

“Jess. His name’s Jess, which you know perfectly well by now. And I can miss a few days of school for this.”

Xander decided not to argue. He’d expected that Dawn would want to go. He’d even contemplated not telling her, just so that she wouldn’t, but she’d notice if he vanished for a couple of days. “Fine. You’ll have to come up with something to tell him, though. You can hardly tell him that you’re off to see the ghostly vampire you used to have a crush on, can you.”

Dawn nodded thoughtfully, remembering the big argument that she and Jess had had after she’d told him that she used to have a crush on Spike and that Jess reminded her of him. Telling Jess that Spike was still alive (in a manner of speaking) would be all kinds of bad. “Yeah, I guess. At least Rory knows about all of this stuff. You can tell her the truth.”

Xander didn’t reply. Rory had been with him in the aftermath of the raid on the New York base (if you can call a single vampire walking in on Andrew in the shower a raid). He knew that Rory wasn’t a huge fan of the kind of stuff that he used to do. They’d already broken up once about it. He didn’t want her to worry about him. He didn’t want her to know that other bases had been attacked. He especially didn’t want her to know about Siberia. He wondered if he could get away with a lie. It might make her feel better.


	5. Chapter Five

“What would you say if I said 'In Omnia Paratus' to you?”

Xander blinked. When he’d come into Luke’s that morning, fully expecting to see Rory there, he hadn't been prepared for her to spring a question on him before he had even sat down. So he sat down. It didn’t make him feel notably more prepared. “Um, something about Hindu gods and Indian takeaway? My Latin is… well, kind of non-existent.”

“It means ‘ready for anything’.”

Now Xander was beginning to wonder if he had in fact woken up, because that sounded spookily like Rory already knew that he was going out of town for a few days and might well be in a bit of danger. Which was impossible, unless she had suddenly become psychic. Either that or Dawn had somehow managed to tell her, which he doubted because he had come in with Dawn, so unless she was suddenly psychic it was more than slightly unlikely. “Um, why are you ready for anything? Not least obscure Latin phrases that really sounds like it’s about paratha?”

“Well, it’s just that, when I was coming over from Yale for the party yesterday, I saw this girl in a gorilla mask say that to a car, which then let her in and drove away.” Rory explained.

Xander relaxed slightly. This had nothing whatsoever to do with him going to LA. “So, what’ve you been smoking and did you bring enough to share?”

“I did a little research, and it turns out that it’s the motto of a secret club at Yale called the Life and Death Brigade.”

“Firstly, how did you manage to do research on anything between now and then? We had a party, and then you went to sleep. Then you woke up and had your million morning coffees. When did you even have the time to look something up? Secondly, they’re probably not necromancers.”

“What? Who said anything about necromancy?” Rory said, so surprised by that that she decided to abandon the first line of enquiry completely.

“Come on. A secret group of people who speak Latin and call themselves the Life and Death Brigade? How does that not sound like necromancy to you?”

“Maybe if this was Sunnydale. But they’re a bunch of rich kids famed for pulling stupid stunts. The Latin just kind of goes with the territory. Absolutely no raising of the dead to be seen.”

“You say that now, but just wait until they try and feed you to a giant snake monster thingy.” Xander grumbled.

“Anyway, I'm just mentioning this because I found out that one of the people who works at the newspaper with me is probably part of the society, so I thought I’d worm my way in and then write a scoop. No one has got close to them before.” Rory said excitedly.

“Oh. Cool. Just, if they offer you some part of a fish and some kind of plant, don’t take it. You will turn into a zombie.”

“So I might be a bit busy for a few days, is the point that I'm trying to make.” Rory said. “I’m not quite sure what I'm going to have to do to get in with them for the scoop.”

“I see. Well, in terms of being busy for the next few days, I’ve got to go to LA for a couple of days. We’ve kind of got a diplomatic emergency going on, and they want me down there as a sort of representative for the guys at Coffee Lion House. That sort of thing. I’ll probably be back by the weekend.”

Rory listened to this calmly and without interrupting. When she was sure that he had finished, she hit his arm with a spoon. She didn’t hit him particularly hard, and it wasn’t a particularly big spoon, but she had just been using it to stir her coffee and Xander was wearing a light coloured shirt. It splashed. Xander sat staring at is arm for several seconds before looking back up at Rory, who looked torn between annoyance, amusement and embarrassment. “Why have you suddenly devolved to being about three?”

“I think it probably had something to do with the complete bucket of hogwash you just tried to feed me.”

“I would _never_ feed you hogwash. How could you suggest such a thing? I don’t even know what hogwash _is_.” Xander said indignantly.

“In this case, a pack of lies. I was there when you got the call yesterday, you know. I was with you in New York. Something is happening, and you’re being called in to help sort it out. And you’re going, even though you said you wouldn’t because you’re retired from that sort of stuff, and you feel guilty because of that and so you’re lying to make me feel better.” Rory said and then took a deep breath. It didn’t do much to calm her down.

“Wow.” Xander said, after a handful of seconds. “Um, yeah. Basically that. I didn’t want you to worry. I’m probably not going to be doing anything dangerous, but, um, you know how these things go.”

“I do. But you don’t have to lie to me about it. I’m a big girl now, you know. I’m twenty now. I didn’t freak out even a little bit when you told me you were part fish yesterday. I’m not really happy about you going off and saving the world, but so long as you’re back by the weekend that’s fine.”

Xander, whose highlight of his twentieth year had been the fact that he had been split two people, nodded. “I know you can cope with this, Rory. But I wasn’t really lying when I said that there’s diplomatic problem going on. It’s just the diplomatic problem happens to involve an evil law firm run by a mass-murdering vampire. We think that all the problems are caused because someone brought back Spike, but that’s why I’m going to La, so we can figure out what’s going on and make _sure_ that it’s Spike. And by the way, you've been twenty for about three weeks, so it's not really a ringing endorsement of your maturity.”

“Whatever. Fine.” Rory said, who was thinking that she would probably prefer it if she didn’t actually know the details. “But next time something like this happens, tell me. I can handle it, I swear.”

“Sure. If something like this ever happens again, which it won’t, you’ll be the first to know.” Xander said, fully aware that he was lying. This sort of thing happened every year. He knew from looking at Rory that she was thinking the same thing.

~*~

Dawn had indeed gone into Luke’s with Xander, but upon finding that Jess wasn’t there she had waited only long enough to get a double espresso before leaving to go and find him.

It didn’t really take her long. Stars Hollow wasn’t a big town, and Jess tended to visit the same haunts. She found him sprawled under a tree with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, reading. This wasn’t all that unusual.

“Hey, Jess.” Dawn said, sitting on a protruding root.

“Hi.” Jess said absently, turning the page.

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to LA for a few days. I’ll be back soon.”

“Ah. I wondered why you weren’t in school. Have a nice time.” Jess turned a page.

That appeared to be that. Dawn was somewhat surprised by that, although she shouldn’t have been. Her relationship with Jess was unusual, although given her past experience with such things she didn’t know that. Compared to most of the ones she had known, it was downright ordinary.

They were nominally dating, but they spent most of their time together talking about literature, which they both knew a lot about, and music, which Jess knew more about than anyone Dawn had ever met, and films, which was mainly Dawn’s province. During this, they occasionally kissed. They didn’t go on dates, or talk about their feelings, or do the sort of stuff that couples normally do. On Jess’ part, this was because he hadn't the faintest of ideas about what he was doing and he didn’t want to ruin this, like he had with the only other relationship he had actually wanted to take past a one night stand. Similarly, every relationship Dawn had seen had come crashing down around her ears, so if she didn’t do all the relationship-y stuff then she felt more assured that this wouldn’t.

In conclusion, it often seemed as though the pair were connected only by the smallest of ties. Nevertheless, Dawn would’ve expected that Jess would express more interest in why she was leaving town for a few days. She waited for a few seconds, but no further response was forthcoming. “Is that it?” she said eventually.

And then she nearly jumped out of her skin when Jess suddenly tossed his book aside and pounded his fists against his chest. “No! Lord, why do you take her from me? How can I endure life if she is not by my side, every waking minute, every sleeping second? Surely my heart will break from my chest and follow her, should she leave. I will stay here, a hollow husk, until she returns and makes me whole.”

Dawn sat stock still, not sure how to respond. Jess turned to her, grinning, and said “Is that more what you were expecting?”

“Uh, no. I was expecting you to ask why. Not that I didn’t appreciate the theatrics, or anything.”

“Well, I would’ve asked, but it seems like your past is kind of a closed book and I’m really not the sort of the sort of person to pry.”

“That’s okay, because all I would’ve told you is that it’s sort of a family emergency.”

“Is Buffy okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Its… well, it’s complicated.”

“See, that’s about what I expected you to say. So I didn’t bother to ask, because I knew that’s what you’d say.”

“It’s still polite to ask, though, Jess.”

“Okay. I’ll bear that in mind for the future.”

~*~

Harmony wasn’t a particularly good secretary. Many of the talents that made people truly excellent at that job just slipped completely out of her grasp.

However, later that evening, she knew enough to get Angel, even though he was in a meeting with a very important client.

The reason for this was because it’s generally wise to get a small squadron of Slayers and a powerful witch whatever they want, especially when they’re accompanied by a mystical Key and a carpenter.

As a result, it wasn’t long until Angel, Gunn and Fred were sitting in a room facing the high command of the new Watchers’ Council. Only Lorne was absent, and that was because he was down in Hollywood trying to convince a celebrity that a new record would be just the thing for their career.

~*~

Angel had been having a bad day. Efforts so far to corporealize Spike had been unsuccessful, which meant that he was drifting around as he pleased, taking great pleasure in making annoying remarks, safe in the knowledge that no one could stop him. Furthermore, and old and powerful client of Wolfram and Hart had shown up, having ‘accidentally’ eaten about thirty people, and wanted him to make sure nothing happened to him as a consequence. Angel couldn’t seem to get him to understand that, under him, Wolfram and Hart no longer worked that way.

And now this. Truthfully, Angel had been expecting something like this to happen after he’d gotten word that every potential Slayer had been activated. He had just expected a little more warning.

What he hadn’t expected to happen was for the first thing any of the envoys of the Council said to him to be “Where’s Spike?”

Gunn shrugged. “Not sure. He’s a ghost. We can’t exactly keep an eye out for him when he can hide inside walls.”

“Hold on a second.” Angel said. “You’re here about Spike?”

“Partly.” Said Buffy, for whom the sudden reappearance of Spike was cause for mixed feelings. “Partly because vampires keep breaking into our outposts uninvited, and as a vampire who’s running an evil law firm you’re right at the top of our list of suspects.”

“Yeah, you’re right up there with the First Evil.” Xander said, unable to avoid the pleasurable feeling he got from the look of pure shock on Angel’s face.

Fred frowned. Spike physically couldn’t have told anyone from the Council that he was here. She hadn't, even though she couldn’t help but think that Willow might be able to help with Spike’s problem, because Spike had asked her not to. She very much doubted that Angel or Gunn would’ve. Which left only one other person, who just so happened to be the only person not to be in the room right then. “Wesley told you, didn’t he? About Spike, I mean. That’s why you’re here.”

Xander nodded. “He appeared on my doorstep yesterday morning. Told us that you weren’t actually an evil law firm, at least not this branch, and that Spike was alive. Or, well, not alive. I mean not alive, but in a different way than the way that he’s normally not alive.”

“Where is he?”

“Connecticut.”

“Connecticut?” said Angel, who was feeling as though this conversation was starting to get away from him somewhat. “What’s in Connecticut?”

“Nothing much.” Xander replied. “Dawn and I just happen to live there.”

“Where is Dawn, by the way?” Buffy said, looking around. A quick head count revealed that she wasn’t in the room, although she certainly had been because it had been she who had asked “Where’s Spike?”

“She snuck out a couple of minutes ago.” Faith said helpfully. “I guess she went looking for Spike.

“What? Why didn’t you say something?” Buffy said.

“Well, I was kind of enjoying watching all this stuff with ex-lovers and I didn’t want to interrupt.” Faith smirked.

Before anyone could say anything, they were interrupted by the power going out, plunging the room into darkness. Low level lighting came on a few seconds later, as did an alarm. This, however, wasn’t what drew everyone’s attention.

No, the thing that drew the most attention was the sight of Willow suddenly doubling over as though someone had just punched her in the gut. The reason for this, it later transpired, was that there had suddenly been a massive magical disturbance. This was not say that someone had suddenly cast a powerful spell. It was, in fact, the opposite of that. For years now, Willow had felt her connection to the earth, to its magic. It had come to be almost a sixth sense. And now it was gone, and she felt hollow.

Dawn came back in a few seconds later, and said “What’s going on?” She might as well have been speaking for everyone when she said that, because no one else had even the outline of an answer for her.


	6. Chapter Six

Not being trusted, Ethan reflected, was only fun when you were in a position of power. Then, you could be as untrustworthy as you like, feeling perfectly safe in the knowledge that no one would be able to do a single thing to stop you.

As it was, he had no magic, and he worked with people who could quite comfortably bounce him off the walls if they felt like he was out of line. And on top of that, he they wouldn’t even let him go anywhere interesting. Of course, they did have a good reason. If Ethan had gone to Wolfram and Hart, if he could’ve managed to get access t even a tiny fraction of the resources that they had at their disposal, then maybe he could figure out a way to get his magic back. And then… well, there was no telling quite what he’d do.

As it was, he was stuck here. They’d even left Giles behind, just to make sure that he didn’t get up to any trouble. Oh, sure, if he was to ask Giles why he was still here he’d say something about how he was teaching a young Watcher control so that she didn’t make everything she touched start growing leaves, or that he was finally getting somewhere in his research about why magic didn’t work the way it should in Connecticut or why demons didn’t go there. But the real reason, Ethan was sure, was because they needed someone to keep an eye on him.

So, Ethan was somewhat surprised when Giles came bursting into his room, disturbing his productive bout of brooding, and told him that they were going to Wolfram and Hart.

“Why?” Ethan said. It was, he knew, a reasonable question. Only earlier that day, everyone had been adamant that he didn’t go anywhere close to the law firm. Nevertheless, Giles seemed put out by it

“Some kind of magical disturbance, I believe. Buffy wasn’t particularly clear.”

“I see. And they want to make use of my expertise to find out exactly what happened.” Ethan said, smirking. He knew it galled Giles when someone knew more than him. And while his old… friend might well be one of the foremost demonologists in the world, he didn’t really know much about magic. And Ethan, even if he couldn’t cast spells, had been the foremost proponent in his field. It was, he knew, why the Council tolerated him at all. “Well, we’d best not keep them waiting.”

~*~

Meanwhile, while the Council was bringing in their magical expert, the group which up until recently had been Angel Investigations was bringing in theirs. Or the closest one they had, given that Wesley had gone gallivanting off to Connecticut.

Knox appeared in the doorway about a minute later. He seemed somewhat nervous, which Angel thought was probably a left over from the days in which Wolfram and Hart not only fired employees but set them on fire.

“What happened?” Angel asked with a gesture which seemed to cover everything from the dim lighting to the witch groaning faintly where she sat.

“Uh, I’m not sure.” Knox said. “Whatever it was, it knocked out our security system, and we’ve got hordes of demons writhing around in agony. Some of them seem to have died outright – it looks like it hit certain species harder than others.”

Angel was about to ask another question, but thought better of it and turned to Fred instead. “We’re not working on some kind of weapon, are we?”

“What?” said Buffy, leaping up from her spot next to Willow. On Willow’s other side, Kennedy followed suit. “You’re working on weapons?”

“No.” Fred said, in what she hoped was a calming voice. “We’re not. We do have a R&D lab, but-“

“What does a law firm need with a lab?”

“-we’re only using it to find a way to corporealize Spike at the moment.” Fred finished. “We’re not working on any kind of weapon.”

“Seems a bit convenient, though, that ‘someone’ attacked us and took Will, the most powerful witch on this continent, out of play.” Kennedy said. “Sounds like a pre-emptive strike to me.”

“Uh…” Knox said, grimacing slightly as everyone turned to look at him. “Whatever it was, it neutralised more than half of our workforce. Whatever it was, it could have been directed against both of us.”

“Who hates both of us?” Dawn mused. “Oh, wait. The First. ‘cause we stopped it, and Angel gave us the amulet we used to do it. And it would be just its style to turn us against each other.”

“She’s right.” Xander said. “As much as I want to believe that Fang Face is behind this, I don’t think he’d do it like this. Not with half a dozen Slayers ready to stake him.”

Someone shouldered Knox out of his position in the doorway. “Well, before we start staking people, we should probably find out what happened, hmm?” Ethan said, kneeling by Willow. “What, exactly, is wrong?”

“The magic is gone.” Willow said, with difficulty. She felt as though something had been amputated, and that something had been herself.

“Is it, now?” Ethan said thoughtfully. “Do you feel cold?”

“Cold?”

“I’ll take that as a no. You’d know what I meant if you were. Was anyone else affected?”

“Most of the demons in the building. Some humans too.” Knox reported.

“Which ones? No, don’t answer that. Do you have a Gnarl around, by any chance?”

“A Gnarl?” Knox repeated, shocked. “You must be joking. Those things can’t be controlled.”

“The people who were affected, they were witches? Magic users?”

Knox thought for a moment. “Well, our database is down, so I can’t check, but I know some of them were. I don’t know about all of them, though. They could’ve been.”

“Well,” Ethan stood up, satisfied “in that case, all that’s happened is that someone tried to pull a stupid amount of magic into themselves, probably in order to work some obscenely difficult spell. And they pulled it out of everyone nearby. Would’ve hit magic users hard, that.”

“That makes sense.” Knox said slowly.

“It does?” Gunn said. “Why was the power knocked- oh. You’re going to tell me that we’re powered by the 10,000 Volt Ghost or something, aren’t you?”

“Something like that.” Knox admitted uncomfortably.

Angel, who had been watching proceedings with something not unlike bemusement (although he’d never admit it), decided that now would probably be a good time for him to start doing something. So he started by asking “Who are you? Some kind of witch doctor?”

Ethan chuckled. “Witch doctor. Good one. Didn’t think you had that sort of thing in you.” Then he saw Angel’s face. “Oh. Okay, you were serious. Do I look like an actual witch doctor to you? Am I chanting gibberish and throwing powders every which way? No, I am not. I am Ethan Rayne, former chaos mage and current magical advisor to the Watchers’ Council.”

“Am I going to get my magic back?” Willow asked quietly in a small voice. There had been times, many, many times, when she wished that she didn’t have magic. When she thought back to the things that she had done when she misused it, for example. When she thought about all the things that she could do, and how they didn’t outweigh the few things which were outside her power. But magic was a part of her, had been the backbone of her life for years. She didn’t know what she’d do without it.

“Yup.” Ethan said cheerfully. “Give it a while and you’ll be as right as rain.”

“Quick question, before you lot get back to bickering – would you mind if I have a look at the system you’re using for power? If it runs on magic it would have to be pretty sophisticated, because a lot of technology just packs up and dies if you pour too much magic in it. I’d love to see how you do it.”

“Of course.” Knox said, a little more animatedly. He had been looking somewhat grey, no doubt because he feared the consequences to his job after this little fiasco. “We use the-“

“Actually, I’d be obliged if you didn’t tell him.” Giles interrupted with a stern glance at Ethan.

Ethan was disappointed, but he tried not to look it. With the amulet that currently held all of his trapped magic secreted in a hidden pocket in his jacket, he had bene hoping that he might be able to use whatever system the building used in order to break it so he could get his power back. But just because he couldn’t do that right then didn’t mean that he wouldn’t ever be able to. Especially if this crisis dragged on. “What’s your name, anyway?” Ethan asked innocently, and not at all because he was hoping to make contacts in the firm that could help him if he ever had to make a run from the Council.

“Knox.” Knox replied.

Ethan frowned. That name seemed familiar to him for some reason, and not just the obvious. “Just Knox? Is that with a K or an N?”

“K.”

“Hmm.” Ethan said thoughtfully. It would either come to him or it wouldn’t.

Angel had been blindsided by the sudden appearance of the Council. He’d also been taken completely unaware by the sudden magical problem, which he was definitely going to resolve later. He didn’t want to take Ethan’s word for it, because if his memory was correct (and it always was) this was the self-same Ethan that had wreaked havoc in Sunnydale every time he had raised his head. Angel didn’t like surprises, and on top of that he was standing face to face to with Buffy, which just made everything seem more awkward. So, rather than descending into arguments about who did what and who didn’t, which he suspected was as far as this meeting would get, he decided to say “Get out. Everyone get out. I want to talk to Buffy alone. About this.”

There was some protest about this, which was quelled (somewhat) by Buffy saying “Seriously, guys, it’s probably for the best. Don’t worry.”

And so, despite their misgivings about this situation, the room gradually emptied. Faith was the last to leave, seemingly so that she could give the pair a salacious wink.

After a long, uncomfortable silence, Buffy said “So. You’re not behind the vampire attacks.”

“I didn’t even know that there _were_ vampire attacks. In any case, my kind don’t really like me very much. I’m not really all that keen on giving them a helping hand.”

“Fair enough. You’re definitely not evil, then?”

“Do I look evil to you?” the vampire said, spreading his arms in a gesture that inadvertently encompassed his large office, complete with weaponry adorning the walls. Realising that this didn’t really help his case, he promptly lowered them again.

“Well, to be honest, you never looked particularly evil even when you were evil. Except, you know, when you were actually doing evil things. But then, I'm probably not the best of judges on that front.”

“I took this job because of… because I wanted to bring down the company from the inside. Being a tiny detective agency didn’t really make much of a difference to the big plan. And for Cordy. I-I… we needed the medical facilities for her.” Angel said, carefully not mentioning Connor. “Not because I'm evil.”

“Okay. But you have to understand, when… the vampires… this company… you understand, right?”

Angel nodded, not trusting his voice not to betray the bitterness he felt.

“Yeah, Wesley said it wasn’t you. I… I didn’t really believe it either, but it was better that than the alternative.” Buffy said. Suddenly, she seemed really, really tired. “Xander’s got this theory that whoever brought Spike back brought back the First, as well. Because of the whole bringing back people from the dead thing, you know. And, no offence, but you being evil is a hell of a lot better than that.”

“But you don’t know for sure?” Angel pressed. “You’re not positive that it’s the First? Because it could be anyone. It could even be someone who wanted to set us against each other.”

“It might not even be that.” Buffy admitted. “Before we found out about Spike, we were running on the assumption that destroying the Hellmouth had messed up the mystical boundary that stops vampires coming in uninvited.”

“I’ll dedicate all my resources to finding out what’s happening. Between us, we’ll find out what’s going on. Although, I’ve got to say, I don’t trust your magic expert.”

Buffy gave a small smile. “Neither do I, but if Willow doesn’t get better I’ll dangle him off of a building until he comes up with a better explanation for what happened to her. That usually works.”

“Well, um, I’d better make sure that the building gets up and running again.” Angel said. His words were somewhat belied by the fact that he didn’t move a muscle.

“Yeah, I’d better go and… run stuff.” Buffy said. She too didn’t move a muscle, but this was for a completely different reason than Angel. She wanted to ask if she could see Spike. She also didn’t want to ask if she could see Spike. She also knew that asking Angel would be monumentally insensitive. But she wanted to see Spike. Eventually, she compromised by not asking to see Spike, and left.

~*~

Meanwhile, back at Yale, Rory was standing in the lobby of her dorm building wearing a blindfold. The reason for this, apparently, was the make her look completely stupid. The Life and Death Brigade were clearly having a joke at her expense, because she really didn’t think that this was the initiation rite.

She was just about to give up when she felt a hand on her shoulder. A voice in her ear whispered “Is there any reason that you’re standing around wearing a blindfold?”

Rory spun around and removed her blindfold to see Xander standing there grinning at her. “ _Xander_? What are you doing here? I thought you were down in LA?”

“Yeah, well, the thing about that is that I'm not. I was nearly there – boarding the plane, in fact, when I got a message not to go. So, naturally, I called everyone I could think of trying to figure out what was going on, which took a while, but lo and behold it turned out that it was a bunch of witches being coerced by vampires to do exactly what they said. They’re being rescued even as we speak. So everything is all fine and dandy, and I don’t have to go jetting off to California.”

“That’s great!” Rory said, not able to hide her relief that the situation had been resolved without any danger to Xander.

“Still doesn’t answer why you’re wearing a blindfold, though. Is there something that you’d like to tell me?”

“It’s just the Life and Death Brigade. They told me to do it. I figure that they’ve stood me up, though, because they haven’t showed.”

“Well, that’s good for me.” Xander said, smiling. “I was going to ask if you’d like to jet off to Hollywood or something, but I remembered that you’re busy, but if you’re not, then… Hollywood?”

“Hollywood? But… wait, what? Why… huh?”

Xander rubbed his chest. “I’m not sure if you’re speechless with delight at the offer, or just confused. If you’re confused, I'm not really that sure why. I'm just offering to take my girlfriend to LA.”

“But I thought you didn’t need to go to LA now.”

“I don’t. But the plane is still ready and waiting, and I thought that I’d show you the sights. I know the city really well, because I was there after… um, never mind, but anyway I can do the whole tour guide thing if you like.”

“I thought you said you were just about to board the plane? It’ll be long gone by now.”

“One of the perks for working for an ancient, secret and above all rich company is that it really isn’t that hard to charter a plane. So what do you say to LA? Oh, that rhymed. Anyway, if you’re going to protest because you’ll miss some school, you’re just about the most studious girl on the planet. You’re probably already way ahead. You can miss a couple of days. Come on, let me whisk you off your feet.”

“Fine!” Rory laughed. “Let’s go!”


	7. Chapter Seven

People who are about to be whisked away to LA do not, as a rule, head back to their dorm room. Especially not when the person doing the whisking was standing right outside. As a result, Xander felt perfectly justifying in saying “Where are you going?” Of course, he had to catch up to Rory in order to say this.

“I’ve got to pack, and tell Paris where I'm going, and explain to Doyle why I'm not following up on my article on the Brigade, and then I need to call Mom.” Rory explained hurriedly.

“Look, can we not go see Paris? In case you hadn't noticed, I’ve kind of avoided meeting her…”

“Yeah, I know she’s kind of… angry that you made me think you were dead, and she didn’t really get over the Valley Jesus thing you pulled when you first met, but still, that’s no reason to avoid her.”

“Well, if don’t know which Paris you’ve met, because if it was the one I’ve met, you wouldn’t be saying that… I don’t even know how you manage to live with that person. Honestly, I’ve met demons nicer than she is.” Xander said. When Rory continued onwards without slowing down he grabbed her arm. “Seriously. Can’t I just sweep you off your feet? I’ll give you my cell so you can call Lorelai, and trust me I’ve got enough of a budget to buy you anything you want in LA so packing isn’t a problem-“

“But my stuff’s right there.” Rory said reasonably, pointing down the hall.

Xander looked at her solemnly. And then Rory was fairly certain that she fell asleep and started dreaming, or was suddenly bespelled by some kind of demon, because that was a more reasonable explanation for what she was seeing than, say, it was actually happening.

Because what was actually happening was that Xander had started to sing. Actually, his voice was surprisingly good, which was something of a surprise given that Xander’s dancing abilities suggested that he wouldn’t be able to carry a tune in a bucket. What was even more surprising was that he was singing a Cat Stevens song, which Rory would never have imagined would be a song in Xander’s repertoire.

“ _Baby, I'm grievin'  
But if you wanna leave, take good care  
I hope you have a lot of nice things to wear  
But then a lot of nice things turn bad out there  
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world  
It's hard to get by just upon a smile  
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world-_“

“What are you doing?” Rory hissed, after she made sure by dint of a self-applied pinch that she wasn’t, in fact, asleep.

“I’m trying to serenade you.” Xander said, as though that was the most reasonable thing to do in the middle of a dormitory hall.

“And there was me thinking you were just putting on a show.” Said a girl which Rory didn’t recognise. A quick glance around revealed that quite a few people had gathered to listen to the impromptu singing.

“Why don’t you carry on with the serenading?” someone else said. “ _We_ liked it.”

Xander gave an elaborate bow.

“You’re going to keep singing at me, aren’t you?”

“Yup.” Xander replied cheerfully. “Don’t worry, though, I won’t sing any embarrassing songs. Probably.”

“That’s blackmail, you know.”

“It’s no worse than the kind of things Paris is going to say to try and stop you from leaving. We both know that she’s not going to be pleased if you take a few days of school. At least Lorelai will only tell you not to do anything stupid.”

“I know exactly what she’ll say. She’ll tell me not to get drunk and fall out of a window.” Rory replied absently. Xander had a point. Paris would probably say all kinds of things about what happened to people who took a few days off school, and Rory, being the type of person who wouldn’t normally skip school unless for anything less than the end of the world (or, in this case, the world not ending), would agree with her. So avoiding that would probably be good, because she did want to spend some time with Xander, and also because she didn’t really want to become known as The Girl With The Singing Boyfriend.

“Is that a reluctance to speak to the girl named after a city I sense?” Xander said, nudging her gently.

“Yeah. Kinda. I guess.” Rory ran her fingers through her hair. “Yeah, it is. Though I don’t get why I can’t pack.”

“Well, Ro-Gil, I’ve been poor most of my life, so now that I’ve got the opportunity to shower my girlfriend with pretty dresses or anything else she wants, I’m going to seize it with both hands.”

“Well, what girl could possibly refuse such an offer?” Rory asked, definitely not blushing, no really, she wasn’t.

“I’m hoping my little Lion Girl can’t.”

“Little, huh?” Rory said playfully. “You’d better watch it, mister.”

“Or what?” And so saying, Xander swept her up bridal style and started carrying her away, in the opposite direction to her dorm. He ignored her surprised yelp. He wasn’t quite so successful when she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, but at least he managed to avoid dropping her.

~*~

Lorelai was busy mediating a dispute between Michel and one of the guests at the Dragonfly when her phone rang. She was more than happy to leave the pair to it, especially given that she didn’t particularly like the guest in question and wouldn’t mind all that much if he didn’t come back.

“Hey, Rory. What’s going on?”

“Well, I will be. Going on a plane, I mean. To LA.”

Lorelai blinked, as she mentally tried to find a story that would fit this sudden revelation. “You’re not chasing after Xander, are you? I know he’s probably gone over to thump some gangs’ heads together until they stop being so violent or something, and doubt he’d be pleased if you got in the middle of that.”

“Mom, it’s nothing about gangs. It was just a problem with his charity, and he’s got that all fixed now, he didn’t even have to go to LA, so he thought he might as well bring me along and we can see the sights or something.”

“Okay, who are you and what have you done with my daughter? Because I know you can’t be suggesting taking a few days off in the middle of term. You can’t be the same girl who tried to go to school while she had pneumonia, can you?”

“Mom, I was eight. You can’t hold it against me, especially given that you couldn’t even manage to make chicken soup without burning it. I still don’t know how you did that, by the way.”

“Still, you’re being irresponsible.” Lorelai paused. “I love it.” She dimly heard Rory say something that sounded suspiciously like ‘I told you so.’ “Wait, is Xander there?”

“Um, yeah. Why, you want to say something to him?”

“Yeah, I want to tell him not to let you get drunk and fall out of a window. Put him on.”

A second later – “Hey, Lor. Don’t worry, I'm not really the drunk, cavorting type of guy.”

“I didn’t think you were. Although, I’ve got to say, I’m definitely thinking about it now.”

“I’d roll my eyes at you, but that doesn’t work over the phone. Can’t even roll ‘em down the phone line.”

“Shame.”

“Anyway, I’ll take good care of her. I promise I won’t let her drink everything in sight and dance on the tables. She’s just punched me in the shoulder and told me to stop, by the way.”

“It’s not about that. Look, Xander, you never told me all that much about the sort of stuff that you used to get into, but _don’t get her involved in that sort of stuff._ ”

“I’d never do that, Lor. This is just a little holiday. She’ll enjoy it, trust me.”

Lorelai sighed. “Fine. Have a good time.”

~*~

Xander had many skills. If you wanted someone to build you a house, fight a vampire, or say something ridiculous at precisely the wrong time, then he was the go-to guy. But when it came to magic, there wasn’t really much he could do. He couldn’t help Willow get her magic back, or help figure out who had pulled such a vast amount of magic that it had killed off a bunch of demons and knocked out a building’s power supply, or help with the ongoing mystery of what was happening to allow vampires entry into dwellings.

So he left Angel and Co to try and sort out Wolfram and Hart’s power and marshal its resources, and Willow to get her magic back, and Ethan and Giles to try and work out what was going on with the vampires, and took Dawn and went back to Stars Hollow.

He did make one discovery, however. He found out that, in terms of flying companions, Dawn was just about the worst that anyone could possibly ever have. He wondered when she had found the time to overdose herself on coffee, because she seemed to have an attention span of minus several seconds and was prone to larking off when he tried to get through security. He got the distinct impression that the other passengers weren’t best pleased with her, either.

It took about seven hours to fly from LA to Hartford. As far as Xander was concerned, taking that journey twice in one day was rather too much travel, and he’d really like to spend most of the return flight sleeping. Dawn, however, seemed intent on making sure that not only he didn’t, but that no one else on the flight did.

It was ridiculously early in the morning when the plane touched down. It was slightly less ridiculously early in the morning when Xander arrived back at his house in Stars Hollow and managed to separate himself from the _still_ talking Dawn. He would’ve liked nothing more than to go to sleep, and sleep through until next week. But he didn’t manage that. Sleeping wasn’t something that came easily to the ex-vampire hunter.

So instead, he rolled over and picked up his phone to call Rory. He hadn’t called her in the night like this since he’d been in Sunnydale. He doubted she’d be awake, but even hearing her voice on the answering machine message would be nice.

Therefore it came as something of a surprise when Rory answered. “This had better be good.” Her voice was more like a modulated yawn than anything else.

“Uh, no, not really. I was just going to leave you a message saying I’m home.”

“Couldn’t you have waited and then surprised me in the morning like a normal person?” Rory complained.

“Probably.” Xander admitted. “But where’s the fun in that?”

“Dunno. Too tired. Ask me in the morning.”

“Fine. Good night, Lion Girl.”

“’night.”

~*~

Meanwhile, back in LA, Rory and Xander were checking into a hotel.

“How many rooms do you want to get?” Xander asked.

“What?” Rory said.

“I mean, do you want two rooms…” he stepped in close “…or one?”

Rory blinked. “Oh. _Oh_.”

“Oh indeed.”

“Um, I, uh, think two rooms would be fine.”

“If you’re sure…”

“Um, yeah. Yes, I think so. Yeah.”

“You don’t really sound sure.”

“I’m sure. Two rooms. Yup. Definitely two.”

“Well, okay then. Two rooms it is.”

~*~

A while later, while Rory was lying in the room next to Xander’s and absently wondering what would have happened if she had agreed to share a room, Xander took out his phone and hit a number on speed dial. “How long?”

The voice that replied could only be called a voice under the loosest of definitions. It sounded more like what you might here if you took a lightning bolt, made it sentient, and then listened to it whisper. “Longer than I thought. Perhaps a few days. Holding this much power is… difficult. It will be a while before I’ve got it entirely under control.”

Xander whistled. “Might not have that long. You know the others won’t hold together so well.”

“I am fully aware. Continue as planned.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note: I don’t own Cat Stevens, nor ‘Wild World’.


	8. Chapter Eight

Lorelai’s morning coffee at Luke’s was her favourite part of the day. It had been for years. She could go in, drink coffee, bicker companionably with Luke, and have breakfast with Rory if she was around. It wasn’t until she left that the world caught up with her, and she had to deal with problems like Michel getting a paper cut or whatever it was that her parents had done this time. Nothing like that bothered her at Luke’s.

However, when she went in that morning, she was surprised to see Rory sitting at the bar. From what she’d said yesterday, Lorelai would’ve expected her daughter to be in LA by now, doing whatever it was that people did in LA. Film star spotting, or something. And yet here she was, sitting in Luke’s, just like she had always used to back before she’d moved to Yale. Speaking of which, if she wasn’t in LA, Rory should at the very least be at school.

Normally, Lorelai wasn’t one to deal with problems before she’d had her morning coffee. Coffees. But this was Rory. So Lorelai sat down next to her and said “You know, this isn’t actually LA. I can understand why you might be confused – I do look remarkably like Liv Tyler – but if you ever get confused, you can tell the difference because you grew up in one of them and you used to go to school just over there. Look, if you squint you can even see where it says ‘Stars Hollow’ over the door.”

“Morning to you too, Mom.” Rory said. She sounded a little groggy. "I don't think Liv Tyler even lives in LA."

“Never mind that. Is everything okay, sweetie? I thought you’d be long gone by now, and you’d be snapped up by some fashion model scout and you’d never come home and I’d be worried sick while you’re busy posing in pretty dresses holding tiny kittens or something.” Lorelai said. “Speaking of which, where’s my coffee?”

“Right next to you.” Luke answered from across the room. He’d put it there shortly after Lorelai had come in.

“Thank you!” Lorelai called back, holding her cup aloft like some kind of trophy before turning back to Rory and asking “What happened?”

“Well, some new girl came to Coffee Lion House, and Xander had to deal with that, and there were problems with the plane, and then Paris badgered me for about an hour straight about missing classes and stuff – which is why I’m here, by the way, because my class today isn’t until the afternoon and I don’t want a whole day of Paris yelling at me – and Logan asked why I didn’t show yesterday… basically, we’re busy people and we should save our trip till the holidays. And by the way, coffee has nothing to do with kittens or pretty dresses.”

“That sucks.” Lorelai said. “Not the stuff about coffee and kittens, I mean your stuff sucks.”

Rory shrugged. “It’s not so bad. We’ll go at some point. Besides, this way I don’t get to miss classes.”

“Uh huh. That’s definitely a silver lining.” Lorelai said drily.

“Oh, you know me. There’s nothing like a nice bit of school work to cheer me up. Speaking of which, I should probably head down to the library and get some work done. I doubt even Paris would bother me there.”

“I thought the libraries were too drafty down in Yale land?”

Rory shrugged. “They’re growing on me. I’ll see you a bit later – I’ll probably have to run away from Paris this evening, too.”

“Fair enough. I’ll see you then.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.” Rory left.

“Everything alright with her?” Luke said as he came over.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Just a little minor disappointment. Nothing she won’t get over.”

“Are you sure, though?”

“What? Yeah, of course I am. Why? Did she say something?”

Luke shook his head. “It wasn’t that she said something so much as what she was drinking.”

“Uh, you’re going to have to fill in some gaps here, Luke, ‘cause I'm pretty sure that Rory wasn’t drinking anything, and you’d have thrown her out if she had.” Lorelai said.

“I don’t mean alcohol. You’ll never guess what she bought.”

“Prune juice?”

Luke blinked in surprise. “No.”

“A _big_ glass of prune juice? Help me out here, Luke, you know I’m no good at guessing games.”

“Tea.”

“Tea?”

“Tea.”

“Really tea?”

“Yup. Tea.”

“Wow.” Lorelai murmured, shocked. To the best of her knowledge, Rory had had tea precisely once, and that had been when they were in England on their tour of Europe, where it was expected. Rory had hated it and resolved to never, ever have it again. “Tea? Wow.”

“I know.”

“There’s only one explanation for it.” Lorelai reasoned.

“She’s trying to kick this addiction you two have got going and wants something a little healthier? Not that it really is, mind y-”

“No, nothing so absurd. Obviously you heard her wrong, and she was too polite to correct you.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “I’ve been serving both of you coffee every day for years. Not once have I given either of you tea. What do you take me for? I even checked that was what she wanted.”

“Well, you’ve got to admit that it makes more sense than Rory actually wanted tea.” Lorelai pointed out. “Or that she suddenly wants to stop drinking coffee. She loves coffee. If coffee was a person, she would so try to marry it.”

“Okay, have I mentioned that the places your mind goes are really weird?”

Lorelai patted Luke’s arm soothingly. “Many times, sweetie, many times.”

~*~

Wesley was a good shot, he knew. Even with a longbow, even though that wasn’t really his thing these days. He enjoyed the tranquillity of standing, staring at a target, and then calmly riddling it with bullets or arrows, whichever he felt like at the time. It was relaxing.

It was somewhat less relaxing when he was being surrounded by Slayers who were all trying to throw him off his game. As though he hadn’t already been intimidated when one of them had got a bull’s-eye at thirty paces with a spoon. A _spoon_. Apparently even the other Slayers got annoyed when Lizzie showed off.

However, Wesley wasn’t going to be put off by anything as trivial as Slayers making fun of him. If he had been, he’d have run away screaming basically as soon as he’d gone to Sunnydale. And these days he was made of sterner stuff.

As it turned out, it took Xander yelling “Wesley! Get over here!” just as he was about to let loose that put Wesley off. The arrow flew straight and true, bouncing off an ornamental (and rather creepy) garden gnome before landing in the pond. Cheers erupted, and several Slayers clapped him heartily on the back. Apparently, no one had seen a shot that bad outside of slapstick comedies.

Wesley extricated himself from the crowd and walked over to Xander. “I thought you weren’t going to be coming back for a couple of days yet.”

Xander shrugged. “Looks like you were telling the truth. In any case, there’s enough of our people down there to be getting on with. They don’t need me there just now.”

“Right. Well, I appreciate you coming to tell me that I’m innocent, really, I never would’ve known otherwise, but my honour is being impugned so if you don’t mind, I’m going to go and fill a stuffed dummy full of arrows. I hear tell that there’s some kind of reward for the winner.”

“Hold on a second.” Xander interjected before Wesley could leave. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Wesley sighed. “Fine. What is it?”

“You’re Head of Intelligence at Wolfram & Hart, right?”

“Yes.” Wesley turned to leave.

“No, wait, that wasn’t the question. The question was, do you have any powerful magic users that work in your office?”

“No. There’s just me. On account of the fact that it’s my office, and no one works in my office but me. But if you meant ‘Do any powerful magic users work in the building’ then yes, there are a few fairly powerful people. Why?”

“Someone pulled a lot of power for a spell while we were there. Sucked it right out of Willow, and a lot of demons collapsed on the spot. I hear some died. Apparently it knocked out your records, so it’s going to take a while to work out who would be strong enough for that, so I figured, hey, why not ask the guy whose job it is to know things?”

“Well, you’re asking the right person.” Wesley replied. “I know exactly which of our employees could do something like that.”

“Really? That’s great! Who is it?” Xander said excitedly.

“None of them. We don’t have anyone even close to powerful enough to pull something like that off. You’d be better off looking for a coven. Probably a very large coven. Which, incidentally, we don’t employ.”

Xander sagged. “You’re certain?”

“Positive. I’d notice if there was a large group of woman who danced naked every full moon.” Wesley said acidly.

Xander narrowed his eyes. “You should stop with the humour. It doesn’t suit you. And, also, you're really bad at it.”

“I’ll bear that in mind. Is there anything else?”

“Nah, that’s all I’ve got right now.”

“Smashing.” Wesley whirled around, pulling out a gun and firing it in the same movement. The sound of it firing covered the much smaller sound of a bullet neatly hitting a spoon mostly buried in a stuffed dummy.

“Jeez, Han Solo, a little warning next time?” Xander said with his hands over his ears.

~*~

Dawn was a good student. She came to class on time, and did her homework, and she was intelligent. Her teachers, having dealt with all kinds of students up to and including Jess Mariano, couldn’t help but wish that more students were like her.

The result of this was that Dawn got some latitude from her teachers. For example, they didn’t mind so much that she had missed a day of school to go to LA. They were aware of her family situation.

So, when Dawn was reading Fahrenheit 451 in her history class rather than working, her teacher didn’t react in the same way that she might have done had it been one of the more disruptive students. She just told her to stop.

When she didn’t, the teacher got a little stricter. “Dawn, if you don’t stop reading that book, I’ll have to confiscate it.”

Without looking up, Dawn said “It’s ironic that you want to stop me from reading a book about what happens to a society when people stop being allowed to read books.”

By this time, the class had gone quiet as they watched the drama unfold. “Yes, and if you want you can write an essay on the implications of that, but the fact remains that this is a _history_ class. We’re covering the Roman Empire just now. You can read that stuff all you like in your free time.”

“Yeah, but I want to read it _now_.”

The teacher was at a loss. Normally, she would’ve sent the student out, or sent them to the Principal. But this was Dawn. In the (admittedly short) time that she had been a student there, she had never been anything other than perfect. “Dawn, I'm going to give you one more warning. Put the book down, or you’ll have to leave the class.”

Dawn responded by calmly turning the page.

~*~

Standing in the corridor was _boring_. Dawn wasn’t a child. She was older than anyone else in that class. At least in a manner of speaking – in another, she should barely be out of kindergarten. She shouldn’t be forced to stand around like some kind of dunce. It wouldn’t be so bad, she reflected, if it wasn’t for the fact that she had had to hand over her book. She wouldn’t have cared if she got to keep on reading.

On the other hand, there wasn’t a teacher out here trying to tell her what to do. She could, for example, walk right out of the school, go find Jess and have some fun. That would be better than doing nothing. She had too much energy to stand still.

Of course, she’d get in trouble, but then Buffy had been expelled twice, from two different schools, and had been charged for murder once. Walking out of school was nothing compared to that. Besides, it wasn’t like playing truant was on a par with an apocalypse, or anything.

So she walked out.

~*~

Jess was surprised when Dawn came into the diner and stared at him expectantly as she waited for him to come over. He felt much the same way as he had when she had come in before school – he had expected her to be in LA for a bit. However, he had _seen_ Dawn walk into school, so he didn’t really know why she was here now.

“Hey, Jess!” Dawn waved at him when he didn’t come over fast enough to suit her.

“Hi. What happened? Why aren’t you at school?”

Dawn shrugged nonchalantly. “I got kicked out for reading Fahrenheit 451 instead of working. Thought I’d leave rather than lurking around the halls like some kind of ghost.”

“Really.” Jess said, just for something to occupy his mouth. His brain was busy thinking. This wasn’t like Dawn. Wasn’t like her at all. She was almost as studious as Rory. She wouldn’t refuse to work. She definitely wouldn’t walk out. That sounded more like something he would do. Well, actually, he wouldn’t have gone into the school at all, but the point still stood.

“Yup.” Dawn said cheerfully. “So, do you want to go and do something… fun?”

Jess frowned, and changed the subject. “How was yesterday, anyway? Did anything happen?”

“Nah, not a thing. Was kind of boring. The thing that we thought was a crisis wasn’t, so we went there, sat around for a bit, and came home. Boring.”

“I see.” said Jess, who didn’t. If nothing had happened yesterday, this sudden change had come completely out of nowhere. “So you thought you’d just leave?”

“Yeah.” Dawn nodded. “So, what about it?”

“What about what?”

“What about some fun?”

“I can’t. I’ve got work, and seeing my tutor later. For my GED, you know.”

“Pah. Let me know when you’re ready then.” Dawn said, before turning and walking out. Jess watched her go, wondering what had prompted the sudden change.


	9. Chapter Nine

Fred sat in Wesley’s office, feeling out of place. It wasn’t just that she knew she should be in her rather space-age office rather than this one, which wouldn’t look too out of place in a 19th century library. It wasn’t just that she knew she should be trying to restore all the systems that had been knocked out by the magic drain rather than just sitting her spinning on her chair. The place just felt wrong, without Wesley in it. That was why she was here, because she was hoping to trace Wesley's steps so that she could figure out exactly where in Connecticut he had gone to, so that she could go and bring him back.

She wasn’t having much luck with that, though. There was a reason that Wesley always did the research, while Fred was perfectly content to make whatever gadget needed making at the time. She didn’t have the faintest of ideas of where to start in order to find him. It wasn’t as though she could comb through an entire state looking for one man. Not even Wolfram and Hart’s resources stretched that far.

That left Fred only one option – ask someone. She didn’t doubt that anyone who was part of the Council could tell her exactly where Wesley was. The problem is, they didn’t like her all that much, no since she had joined an evil law firm. Even Willow, who she had always gotten on well with, had ceased all contact with her after that and hadn’t so much as smiled at her when they had met. So, of course, Fred had to ask someone who didn’t care about her employer.

Like a chaos mage, for example. While Fred was hardly an expert on magic, she knew that the Council was diametrically opposed to all things on the side of chaos. If any one of them was capable of overlooking her employer, it would be someone like that.

So. Ethan Rayne it was.

~*~

Fred managed, eventually, to convince the Council to let her speak to Ethan on the pretext that he would be able to help her get Wolfram and Hart’s systems up and running again. They seemed incredibly reluctant to allow her to do this without someone in the same room, but she eventually won through.

“Can I ask you a question?” Fred asked, as soon as they were alone.

“If you managed to get this far, I doubt any power known to man will be able to stop you.” Ethan said laconically.

“Where’s Wesley? I mean, where exactly is he, rather than just Connecticut?”

Ethan looked at her closely. “Why do you want to know?”

“I-I… um, because he’d be useful, and uh, and uh, he could be helpful.” Fred said weakly. She couldn’t come up with a better answer than she just wanted him around.

“I see.” Ethan said thoughtfully. “Clearly he – I mean his _help_ is important to you.”

“Yes.” Fred replied simply. There wasn’t any point in lying.

“Well, in that case I have a question for you.”

“Um, sure. Go ahead.”

“Can you get me access to whoever it is who actually runs your branch?”

Fred looked puzzled. “You mean Angel? Of course. Why?”

“No, I don’t mean Angel. I mean the person who really holds the power. The one who will go and get things done. Whoever it is who reports to the guys upstairs. The Senior Partners.”

“Oh. Eve.” Fred suddenly had the distinct impression that coming here had been idea. While she _did_ want Wesley back and she _did_ think that he would be useful, she didn’t think it was worth putting a chaos mage in touch with Eve. She strongly suspected that would be a very bad idea.

“If she’s got a line to the Senior Partners, then yes.”

“No.” Fred said. “I can’t. That’s too much.”

Ethan’s eyes clouded. “You don’t trust me. Fair enough. But remember, I did ask nicely.”

Fred frowned. “What? Are you _threatening_ me?”

“Well, yes. Of course. Couldn’t you tell from my menacing tone? Just think – all I have to do is tell Buffy that you were trying to wheedle information out of me and then… well, they’re just looking for a reason to take you down. How long do you think you’ll last, with no power and an army of Slayers beating down your door?”

Fred was in way over her head, she realised. When she had tried to get through to speak to Ethan, she had thought that the reason they didn’t want them alone together was because they didn’t trust her with their magical expert. She hadn’t realised that it was because they didn’t trust their magical expert with her. He was right, though. If he told someone that she had been looking for information, if he said that she wouldn’t meet her price, they would believe him. They already distrusted her, and she was more of a threat than Ethan was.

“Fine. I can get you through to speak to Eve.”

Ethan grinned widely. “Brilliant. If you want Wesley, you can find him in a place called Coffee Lion House, in a little town called Stars Hollow. Oh, and if you think that you can get away without holding up your end of the deal-“

“Don’t worry.” Fred spat. “I’m _trustworthy_.”

Ethan’s face twisted. “Of course you are. How could I expect anything less from you white hats?”

~*~

The thing about small towns is that, generally, it’s pretty easy to find someone. There’s only a few places that they can really be. As such, Xander wasn’t particularly surprised when he was hailed while walking down the street by a cry of “Oi! Jesus!”

Xander sighed, and waited for Lorelai to catch up to him. “What miracles can I work for you this fine morning?”

“Guess what Rory did this morning.”

“Um, twisted her head around 360 degrees and started spiderwalking?”

“Close.”

“Ran off to join a man in a police box as he travels through time and space?”

“Getting a little bit colder now.”

“Seriously, Lorelai, how could I possibly guess? Though I have many near miraculous skills, figuring out what you’re thinking isn’t one of them.”

Lorelai leant close, as though she was about to impart a big secret. “She drank tea.” She whispered conspiratorially.

“I see the problem. If she’s drinking tea now, it’s only a matter of time before she starts doing creepy possessed stuff.”

“That’s one way to think of it.” Lorelai said. “The other is that you got her pregnant.”

To Lorelai’s mild disappointment, Xander didn’t walk into a lamppost, fall over in shock or blush and stammer incoherently. He just stood very still and said “You know, for maximum effect, you probably should have waited until I was drinking something before you said that. It would’ve been the perfect time for a spit-take.”

Lorelai tilted her head. “Why aren’t you freaking out?”

Xander shrugged. “Well, if Rory _is_ pregnant, then I’m not the father.”

Lorelai blinked. “You what?”

“I think it would be thanks to my father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be his name…” he trailed off meaningfully.

“You mean you _aren’t_ having sex with my daughter?”

Now it was Xander’s turn to be taken aback. “Look, Lorelai, I know you take a perverse pleasure in making me uncomfortable, but there is no way that I'm going to discuss my relationship with your daughter. That would be way too weird, even for me.”

“Right. Yeah.” Lorelai paused. “But you haven’t-“

“Look!” Xander exclaimed, pointing behind Lorelai. “It’s the Bee Gees!”

Then, when Lorelai instinctively turned to see, Xander took the opportunity to run in the opposite direction.

~*~

“And this,” Xander declared grandly “is the best diner in LA.”

Rory looked at it. It looked pretty much like Luke’s, except for the obvious exception that it wasn’t called Luke’s. “Really?”

“Really. You would not believe how good the stuff that Sol cooks is.”

Rory looked at the diner again. “But it’s called Sal’s diner.”

“Yeah, I asked him about that. He said it used to be owned by some guy called Sal, and he never bothered to change the name.”

“Okay.” Rory was, by this point, rather hungry. Xander had shown her what felt like every inch of the city, complete with amusing anecdotes about demons he’d fought all over the place. Rory had never known, for example, that Paris Hilton had briefly been possessed by a forest demon. Although it did explain a few things. “Let’s eat then.”

Seemingly even before the couple entered the diner, a short, jolly man appeared in front of them and said “Xander! It’s good to see you! I thought you’d gone off to Kansas?”

Xander clapped the man on the shoulder. “Oh, you know how it is, Sol. I just can’t keep away.”

“Well, it’s good to see you again. The usual?”

“The usual.” Xander nodded. “And one for Rory, too.”

Sol nodded, and rushed off to get it ready.

Rory looked at her boyfriend quizzically. “He seemed… friendly.”

“Sol? Oh, I saved him from a gargoyle infestation once. Do you have any idea how annoying gargoyles can be? If they think they’re in trouble, boom, they turn to stone and there isn’t a thing you can do them then. The trick is-“

“Um, Xander? As cool as it is to hear all these stories, do you think that we could possibly have dinner without being regaled by tales of you fighting the Loch Ness monster when it went on holiday?”

“But I never – oh. Sorry. I’m just trying to show you a good time, you know, and I don’t, um… yeah. Okay, I’ll stop with the demon stories now.”

“No, I mean, it’s cool and all that, but you kind of peaked when you talked about saving the entire world from an evil thingy stuck in an old film tape. Which, incidentally, you could make a film about. I’d watch it.”

“Yeah, but if you watch it, then the demon escapes and wreaks havoc, so that kind of defeats the point of me heroically saving everyone, right?”

“Well, yeah, but it would still be a good film…”

The couple continued talking, even after their food arrived, and stayed there until way after they were done. Afterwards, neither of them could’ve told you what they talked about – the conversation seemed to move seamlessly from topic to topic, as it only can between people who are truly close.

~*~

Xander had things to do. He really did. Even though he’d been away in LA for barely any time at all, things at Coffee Lion House were already getting out of hand, and that was just the day-to-day stuff. Not even having Wesley around had managed to curb the playful impulses of a house full of Slayers and Watchers who, really, were too young to be either. Xander wondered how Lorelai ever managed to have even a fraction of a second to herself, between her inn and Rory.

Despite all of that, Xander still drove off to Yale to find Rory and ask her just why she had found it necessary to drink tea that morning, even though she had been given every opportunity not to. It wasn’t just that Xander felt like teasing his girlfriend mercilessly, or even that he didn’t feel like starting on the mountain of work he needed to get done. Right at that point, he should’ve been off fighting demons, or figuring out where the demons were, or running around panicking when the demons attacked. Instead, he was here, at Stars Hollow, the most relaxed place on the continent. Going from a mind-set of being ready to fight to being ready to order some linen because some of the youngest Slayers had cut holes in theirs to make ghost costumes. So, as a sort of midway point, he was off to Yale, which had the thrilling prospect of the possibility of having to run from Paris.

Xander had come up with an intricate scenario during his drive. He’d walk into the library, instantly see Rory in some secluded corner reading some massive ancient book with a Russian title, and then he’d ask why she’d drunk tea, and she would say so he would come to Yale to ask her why, and then they’d make out.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so intricate a scenario. More of an intricate fantasy. Okay. Just an ordinary fantasy.

And it was all going just as Xander had predicted, even up until he walked into the library and instantly saw Rory in a secluded corner. 

The difference between his fa- uh, scenario was that she was reading a Batman comic. This was only slightly less out of character for Rory than drinking tea. While Rory would quite cheerfully watch a superhero movie with Xander, she wouldn’t so much as touch a comic. Literally. He’d left one lying around once, and she’d called him to pick it up, saying that she wasn’t going to soil herself by touching a rag which was an offence to literature by its very existence. He would have been somewhat offended, if it hadn’t been for the fact that both Anya and Cordelia had said similar things, and Willow had clearly thought it.

“Did I miss the blue moon?” Xander seated himself opposite his girlfriend.

“Hmmm?” Rory said absently. She appeared to be engrossed.

“You drank tea, and now you’re reading a comic. Maybe I slipped into the world without shrimp without me noticing.”

“Oh, there’s still shrimp. Although I don’t know how that’s relevant. I just thought I’d give them a chance. You like them.”

“Yeah, you can’t spend time with Giles without- wait. You tried these things, which you have denounced in the market square, for _me_?”

“Oh, no.” Rory still hadn’t looked up. “Don’t be so self-centred.”

“Oh, good.” Xander said, relieved. As much as he loved Rory, there were things he wouldn’t do even for her. If he thought long and hard, he might even be able to think of them.

“I woke up today and felt experimental.” Rory turned a page.

“Good. That’s, uh, good. I thought I might come in here and find you levitating the desks, or something like that.”

Rory didn’t deign to reply. Xander wasn’t even entirely sure that she heard him. “Right. So, I’ll leave you to it then.”

“Hmmm?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” Xander got up. He didn’t think Rory noticed.

Well, so much for fantasy. Now it was time for work.

~*~

Eve hadn’t sat in on the meeting between Angel and Co. and the Watcher’s Council, ostensibly because she wasn’t interested in seeing Angel squabbling with his ex, but mainly because Angel had threatened to snap her like a twig if she so much as laid eyes on Buffy. Although Angel currently had a soul, the look in his eyes suggested that, where Buffy was concerned, he would have no difficulty in making good on his threat. Because of this, she had never actually met Ethan.

As a result, when she walked into her office to find him sitting in her chair, with his feet up on her desk, she quite naturally thought that someone who was both completely insane and suicidal had walked in and made himself at home. No one came in her office, not like that.

“So.” Ethan said, grinning. “You must be Eve. I hear you have a direct line to the senior partners.”

“And you must be the person with the death wish. I’ll tell you what, if you leave now and I never, ever see you again, I won’t have you ejected from this building. Through that window.” Eve said, pointing. They were several stories up.

Ethan didn’t seem impressed, although he did take his feet off her desk. “I have… let’s call it a business proposal.”

“My office hours for crazy people is between 25 o’clock and never. Please come back then.”

Ethan put on an offended expression which Eve was certain was fake. “Now, is that any way to talk to someone who is offering to sell you information on the Council?”

Despite herself, Eve was interested. For a long, long time, Wolfram and Hart had been the only large scale enterprise operating in the supernatural world. Sure, the old Council had occasionally ruined some of their operations, and there were other groups in play, but they were the largest and most widespread. Now, there were armies of Slayers on every continent, and only the fact that they were inexperienced stopped them from being a major player. That advantage, of course, wouldn’t last forever, so anyone who could do anything to keep the firm ahead of them would be heavily rewarded. “Who are you? How can you offer me this information?”

Ethan grinned. “My name is Ethan Rayne. I’m sure your sources can find some information on me, if you look good and hard. I’m sure you’ll like what you find. In any case, any information I can find will be yours, for the low, low price of the return of my magic.”


	10. Chapter Ten

Something was bothering Xander. During the long, lonely drive back to Stars Hollow, Xander didn’t even have his fantasies as a distraction, and so he had nothing to do but try and figure what it was. He knew, right off the bat, what it _wasn’t_. It had nothing whatsoever do with vampires mysteriously invading houses, Wolfram and Hart or even the fact that Spike was alive. It was definitely something closer to home.

It wasn’t until he was almost back in Stars Hollow that he worked out what it was. Even then, he wished he had a piece of paper or something, so that he could write it down and work it out. But he didn’t, so he settled for pulling over to the side of the road and staring absently through his windshield while his brain was occupied.

This morning, ridiculously early this morning, he had called Rory and she had picked up. In and of itself, this wasn’t particularly unusual. Back when he’d still been living in Sunnydale, the pair had called each other pretty much whenever they felt like it. Having the other person actually answer the phone was just a bonus. It also wasn’t particularly strange that Rory was too tired to have taken the call. Like her mother, Rory was perfectly happy to lounge around until approximately a minute _after_ she absolutely had to be out of bed.

But, and this was the weird part, Rory had been in Stars Hollow later that same morning. Not only that, but she would have had to have left Yale pretty early in order to make it to Luke’s before Lorelai got there – despite her frequent protests, Lorelai was a punctual inn owner and was almost always the first person up and about at the Dragonfly each morning. This, Lorelai proclaimed, wasn’t natural, and so she had to get up even earlier to drink enough coffee to make sure a battalion wouldn’t need to sleep for a week.

So, why had Rory gone from New Haven all the way to Stars Hollow, just so that she could have a cup of tea, of all things, at Luke’s? She hadn’t come to see him, and hadn’t gone out of her way to meet Lorelai, and there wasn’t any festival currently on. In short, why would Rory break the habit of a life time and get up early to do something?

Ordinarily, Xander might have ignored it. He might have passed it off as the same odd mood that made Rory drink tea and read a Batman comic in the first place. But there was just too much weird stuff going on at the same time. First the vampires, then the revelation about Spike, the strange magic drain and now this. It could, of course, all be nothing, but Xander didn’t think so. Even though he had yet to see any evidence of it being related, he _felt_ as though it was. And that was good enough for him.

~*~

Something was also bothering Jess, but unlike Xander he knew exactly what it was. Seemingly overnight, Dawn had turned into – well, someone like he had been, back before he had started dating Rory. Even during, if he was honest with himself. The thing was, Dawn just wasn’t like that, in the same way that Rory just wasn’t like that. These days, between working at Luke’s and studying for his GED and the odd quasi-relationship he had with Dawn, he wasn’t like that himself.

Except, Dawn had suddenly got herself kicked out of class, decided to play truant and then run off to who knew where because lurking around a diner while he boyfriend worked there just wasn’t fun enough for her. People just didn’t change that radically overnight.

So, after he’d finished his shift, Jess decided that it would be a good idea if he went looking for her, and tried to figure out what was going on.

She wasn’t in a book shop, or sitting on the bridge by the pond, and she didn’t seem to be in her house. Jess doubted she would’ve gone back to school, not with her new mood.

He eventually found her by dint of much searching – not his searching, you understand, but Kirk’s. Apparently he had been working in the film theatre and Dawn had run him out, and he wanted Jess to calm her down. Well, actually he wanted someone to arrest her and possibly put her in front of a firing squad, but Kirk was… well, Kirk. Jess assumed he was overreacting.

So he walked down to the theatre and found Dawn watching an action movie, while eating enough popcorn to keep the Gilmores occupied for a month. There was nothing particularly unusual about this, barring the truly colossal amount of popcorn - except for the fact that Dawn didn’t watch action movies. Jess didn’t know why. Whenever he broached the subject Dawn always said that it was for the same reason that Jess didn’t watch chick flicks. Jess suspected it was more to do with her mysterious and unrevealed past, however.

“Hey, Jess!” Dawn waved him over. “Come, sit down. It’s just getting to the good part.”

Jess ignored and went into the unattended projection booth. Judging by the amount of popcorn in there, he suspected that Dawn had pelted Kirk until he had gone away. He cut off the projector, much to Dawn’s dismay.

“Dawn, we need to talk.”

“Sounds ominous.” Dawn said in a serious voice which was somewhat spoiled by her immediately stuffing a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

It was ominous. Their relationship, such as it was, was based on the fact that neither of them talked about anything more serious than whether Shakespeare actually wrote his own works. Both of them were terrified about making it more serious. “Why are you… what’s got into you? Why are you acting like this?”

“’ike wha’?” Dawn mumbled through a mouthful of popcorn.

Jess just looked at her. Dawn swallowed noisily. “What? Can’t a girl just cut loose? I’ve been Little Miss Academic for months now, and I thought I’d, you know, unwind a bit. It’s not like rebelling hurt anyone, did it, David Robert Jones?”

“Dawn, throwing popcorn at Kirk isn’t being rebellious. That’s just… I don’t know, the kind of thing that a four year old would think of. It’s not like you to be so… childish.”

Dawn looked surprised by this. “You think I’m childish?”

“Usually, no. Just now? Yep.”

Dawn, who in way actually was about four, digested this. “I’m not a child.”

Jess rolled his eyes. “I know you’re-“

“And I can prove it.”

Jess, who had been about to say that Dawn _obviously_ wasn’t a child found himself cut of when Dawn threw herself at him, kissing him passionately. It took several seconds for Jess’ mind to get in gear, and then a few more for him to think that it might be a good idea to break this off before things went too far, and a few more seconds before he could convince his body to stop enjoying this quite so much and actually detangle himself. “Dawn, what are you doing?” Jess said indignantly, although the indignation was spoiled somewhat by the fact that he was flushed and panting.

“Having fun!” Dawn exclaimed as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, and then made to kiss him again. Jess, with some difficulty, managed to fend her off. He scurried to his feet and his behind a chair.

“Dawn, this isn’t… I'm not… we…” he stammered incoherently. “Oh, to hell with this, I’m leaving.”

~*~

Knox was busy. While he knew that there was no longer a possibility of him being set on fire if he didn’t bring back power quickly enough to suit his boss, old habits die hard. In any case, he was also trying to recover the internal security footage from the building, because so far no one had been able to work out who had caused the magic drain in the first place. Knox was pretty sure that he could work it so that the moment he got the power back, he’d have access to the footage up until the drain.

He was right. However, he then had to quickly write a program that would skim through all the footage and show him anyone doing anything that would require enough magic to drain everyone in the building, and then actually running the program.

It didn’t show come back with anything. The project that required the most magic was the one to re-corporealize Spike by a long way, and that had stalled after the Pavayne incident. Nothing else came close.

So it was that, even though Knox knew he wouldn’t be sent sacked with an actual sack, he still found himself somewhat nervous when he presented this information to Angel. He needn’t have worried – he just asked if Knox could put it all on disk and given them to Angel, which Knox was happy to do.

It took Angel about an hour and a half to find anything out of the ordinary. Even then, he wasn’t sure it was important.

It was footage from a corridor, just seconds before the drain had happened. In it, Dawn was walking along, seemingly looking for Spike. Coming from the other direction was a dark-haired woman in her late forties who Angel didn’t recognise. The dark-haired woman bumped into Dawn, even though there was plenty of room in the corridor, and then the footage ended.

It wasn’t much to go on. Angel might have ignored it completely, except for one thing.

That particular corridor was on the several floors away from the room where the meeting between the Council and Wolfram and Hart had taken place, and yet Dawn had walked back into the room seconds after the power had gone. She couldn’t possibly have covered that distance in that time.

Angel called Buffy.

~*~

Jess didn’t know what to do. Dawn _was_ acting strangely, and Jess was pretty sure he should talk to someone about it. But then again, she hadn't been doing it very long, and it wasn’t like he even had anyone that he could talk to about it in the first place. He didn’t think Luke would be sympathetic (“There’s something wrong with Dawn.” “Yeah?” “She’s being all… rebellious and flirty.” “Looks like she’s taken a leaf out of the Jess handbook then.”) and going to Liz with this would just be out of the question.

Really, there was only one person that Jess could talk to. The thing was, he rather thought that it might very well be a better idea for Dawn to return to normal, or at the most go to New York for a few days, rather than talk to this person about his love life, such as it was. The teasing he’d be letting himself in for would be… well, he’d probably be hearing about it for decades to come.

Still. This side of Dawn unnerved Jess, and not just because it had popped up out of nowhere. Dealing with a little – okay, a lot of teasing would be a small – okay, a rather-large-but-not-overly-so price to pay for getting her back.

So, it looked like he’d be talking to Lorelai then.

It didn’t take him long to find her – he knew full well that she’d be at the Dragonfly, this time of day. It took him rather longer to pry her away from whatever highly important thing she was currently doing, but he eventually convinced her. Mostly, he suspected, because she was curious to find out what Jess of all people wanted to talk to her about.

When Jess finally got her alone, away from the prying ears of Michel and Sookie, he began to think that maybe he should have come more prepared, possibly with a script or maybe even a PowerPoint presentation.

“You were going to say something?” Lorelai prompted helpfully.

“Yeah. Um, right. So, anyway, I wanted to ask you something. I mean, uh, there was something I wanted to say. To you. Um.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Not helping. So, anyway, the thing is, you have a daughter, right?”

“I’m so glad you’ve finally managed to notice that. Although it does make the period where you dated her somewhat suspect…”

“Really not helping. But, the thing that I wanted to say was, do you – uh, was there ever a time when Rory was kind of… different?”

“Is this some complicated joke about her drinking tea this morning?” Lorelai asked suspiciously.

“She drank tea? Really? W- ah, no, it’s not about that. It’s about Dawn, and I thought I should ask you because, you know, you’ve got a daughter the same age and they’re quite similar so-“

“Yeah, I thought you might’ve noticed that.” 

“Seriously, could you just stop for a moment? I’m trying to be serious here. Anyway, today, Dawn is being all… weird. She’s bunking school, and being really flirty and-“

“You know, I _did_ notice the lipstick on your face, but being the soul of tact that I am I wasn’t going to say anything.”

Jess scrubbed at his mouth frantically. “Is it gone?”

“…sure!” Lorelai said, after just slightly too long of a pause. Jess made a mental note to go to a bathroom after this.

“So, if you could be serious for three consecutive seconds, I was wondering if you could tell me why Dawn was acting so… not like herself?”

“Have you asked Xander?”

Jess started a little at that. “What? Why would I ask him?”

“Well, the pair of them did just go off to LA for some highly mysterious reason, and it sounds like Dawn’s only been acting strangely since she got back, so…” Lorelai trailed off. “Anyway, I think that’s your three seconds.”

“What?” Jess said absently. Talking to Xander hadn’t even crossed Jess’ mind, although he had thought that Dawn’s trip to LA might have something to do with this sudden mood change, but she hadn’t been gone all that long and he hadn’t thought that such a short trip could possibly have affected her that much. But then, what did he know?

“Your three consecutive seconds of me being serious.”

“Oh. Right. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Mr Lipstick Face.”

~*~

Xander was just about to drive back to Yale, go barging into the library and drag Rory out of there when he got a call from Buffy.

“Hey, Buff. Listen, it’s not really a good time just n-“

“Shut up. Xander, wherever you are, go to your office and look at your emails. We’ve sent you a file that you should look at. Call me when you’ve seen it.”

“What’s going on, Buff? Is something-“ the line went dead as Buffy hung up “-wrong?”

Xander, with all the experience of someone who had lived through and thwarted several apocalypses, knew when something serious was in the works. This business with Rory could wait. He drove back to Coffee Lion House as fast as he could while still under the speed limit, dashed up to his office and plonked himself down in front of his rarely-used computer.

A minute later, Xander has just watched the footage that Knox had recovered from Wolfram and Hart, as well as the note explaining that Dawn couldn’t have made it from there and back to the meeting room in a couple of seconds.

Xander, though, had other matters to concern him. He knew who the other person in the footage was. He was just about to dash out, grab Dawn and subject her to every test to check if she was a demon that he could think of, with his phone already at his ear to call Buffy with his information when he almost collided with Jess. Only years of Slaying things on the streets of Sunnydale gave him the reflexes needed to avoid him.

“Uh, Xander?” Jess said, somewhat awkwardly. “I, um, I wanted to talk to you about Dawn. She’s acting… not like herself.”

Xander looked at Jess, and then down at the phone in his hand, and then at the corridor behind Jess. Dawn – or whoever it was who looked like Dawn – wasn’t going anywhere. Besides acting oddly (like Rory, a treacherous mental voice added) she hadn’t done anything that Dawn herself wouldn’t have done.

Besides, Jess was right here, and he’d already noticed that something was up with Dawn. Xander knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t be fobbed off. Besides, Xander could always do with some help in this situation – it wasn’t as though he could rely on the Slayers and Watchers here. They were precisely because they weren’t ready to be out in the field. And he didn't trust Wesley these days.

So, it looked like Jess was going to be getting a crash course in Demonology 101.


	11. Chapter Eleven

“You should come in.” Xander said gently, ushering Jess into his office.

“Something happened to her, didn’t it?” Jess said, and the worried tone of voice went a long way towards making Xander feel better about the relationship between the two of them. “She got some news when she was in LA, right? Is she okay? Is her sister okay?”

“Not… exactly.” Xander said, wondering exactly how to go about this. He wasn’t usually the go-to guy for revealing the supernatural. That was generally Giles, because everything sounded more plausible when said by a respectable Englishman. “You might want to sit down.”

Jess, who felt like he should be pacing up and down and probably smoking, reluctantly sat in a chair and folded his hands in his lap. He didn’t want to fidget.

Xander sighed. He wasn’t Giles, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t remember when he’d been told. “Well. The world is older than you know.”

“It’s four billion years old already. How much older can it get?” Jess said with all the knowledge of someone who was studying for a GED.

Xander looked taken aback by this. “It is?” he said, with all the confusion of someone who had only scraped through high school.

“Yep.” Jess said, wondering how the history of the planet related to Dawn.

Xander went for a slightly different tack. “Okay. Well, contrary to popular opinion, the world didn’t start out as a paradise-“

“No, it started out as a great big ball of molten rock. Where are you going with this, anyway?”

Xander made a note to get Giles to read up on modern cosmology. “Well, basically, humans aren’t exactly the only intelligent things on the planet. There’s also demons and vampires.”

Jess took a deep breath. “Holy sh-“

“Yeah. That’s how most people react.”

“You must have been planning this for a really long time.”

Xander tilted his head to one side. “What are you talking about now?”

“This is a joke, right? You convinced Dawn to act all flirty and weird, knowing that I’d freak out. I don’t know how you got Lorelai in on this, but-“

“Whoa!” Xander held up his hands. “I’m not joking. This is real. There really are demons and vampires and witches and-“

“Sure there are.” Jess sneered, standing up.

“Jeez. This went so much better with Rory.” Xander said. He wondered if he could convince everyone affiliated with the Council to carry footage of some kind of supernatural event, just for these emergencies. But then, most everyone else could do magic. Either that or bounce people off the walls using just their little fingers.

“You pulled this on _Rory_?” Jess said incredulously. “How is she still with you?”

“Honestly? Not sure. Anyway, that’s so not the point. Look, I can show you proof.”

“Proof. Of _demons_. Are you even hearing yourself?”

“Yeah, trust me. This is so not the weirdest thing I’ve ever said.” Xander stuck his head out into the corridor and yelled “Hey, Wes? Can I borrow you a moment?”

A few seconds later, an unshaven man appeared at the doorway. “What do you want?”

Xander waved a hand at Jess. “Wesley, I want you to show Jess here some magic.”

Jess crossed his arms. Wesley looked nothing like a magician, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t want to see this. He might be annoyed (well, rather more than annoyed), but that didn’t mean that this wouldn’t be amusing. “This ought to be good.”

Wesley looked at Jess appraisingly. “He doesn’t know, does he? Are you sure this a good idea?”

“C’mon Wes, you know me. When have I ever known if my ideas were good or not?”

“Good point.” Wes paused a second, and then rolled his sleeves up. “Right. You see there’s nothing in my hands?”

Jess looked at them closely. “Sure. I’ll accept that.”

And then there was fire dancing on Wesley's palm. It didn’t seem as though anything was actually burning, but Jess could feel the heat radiating out from it. Just not for long, because he reeled backwards in shock and fell over his chair.

“You alright down there?” Xander said, obviously trying hard not to laugh.

Wesley closed his hand and the fire snuffed out. Sweat was rolling down the Englishman’s forehead from the effort. “That good enough for you?”

“Um, yeah.” Jess said, conspicuously standing as far from Wesley as he can manage. “How did you _do_ that?”

“With great difficulty.” Wesley replied dryly.

“That,” Xander said “was magic.”

“So…” Jess said slowly. “You two aren’t demons, are you?”

Xander laughed. He couldn’t help himself. He had been accused of many things, but never a demon. Well, except for that one time when he had accused himself. Or when he’d been a hyena, which was almost the same thing.

Okay, so it wasn’t really that funny, now that he thought about it.

“No. We’re not demons. I'm human. Wesley here is a witch-“

“-warlock-“

“-whatever, he's a human who can use magic. And all the others here are either magic-users or Slayers.”

Jess felt that the conversation, if not his entire life, was getting away from him somewhat. But he recognised that last bit. “You’ve got a band staying here?”

Wesley looked thoroughly nonplussed. Xander sighed. “No. Why does everyone think that? No, we don’t. It’s what the people who kill the bad demons are called.”

“Okay.” Jess said. “I’ve just wandered into a fantasy novel.”

“Sadly, nope. Welcome to the real world.” Xander clapped him on the shoulder.

Jess absently rubbed his some life back into his shoulder. “Right. Okay. Demons. Okay. So… what’s up with Dawn?”

“She seems to have been replaced by someone else who looks like her, but doesn’t quite know how to act like her. I’m not sure why yet.”

Wesley looked at him in surprise. “Really?”

“Yup. So now I’m going to go pick up Rory, who may or may not have also been replaced, and then come back and see if I can get Dawn’s double to talk.”

“Okay.” Jess said seriously. “Just one question.”

“Shoot.”

“Did I fall asleep at some point? Am I dreaming?”

~*~

Xander had expected Jess to be full of questions. Rory certainly had been, back when he’d told her. But Jess… well, Jess was sitting in the front seat, looking as though he was carved out of stone. Xander wondered if he was in shock. It certainly seemed as though he might be.

Dragging him around to pick his ex-girlfriend who may or may not in fact be an imposter so that they could all interrogate someone who _definitely_ wasn’t his current girlfriend probably wasn’t helping with that.

Anyway, although the drive to New Haven wasn’t even all that long, Xander felt the need to fill the oppressive silence. Seeing as how Jess wasn’t asking any of the questions that he felt a normal person would surely be asking at this point, Xander took it upon himself to give him a condensed version of his life since he’d found out that Buffy was the Vampire Slayer. He left out certain things, of course – he didn’t think that Jess needed to know that he was dating someone who, in one sense, was barely three years old, or that Xander had once wiped Rory’s memories of his very existence. But he gave Jess the general gist of his life. He also explained, as quickly as he could, about the events at Wolfram & Hart so that Jess would understand why he thought that Dawn wasn’t herself. It was a shame that Wesley hadn’t been able to come, because Xander was fairly sure that his explanation, such as it was, was pretty garbled.

Jess didn’t respond, which just made Xander all the more certain that he was in shock. When the pair arrived at New Haven, Xander thought it would probably be for the best if he left Jess in the car with his thoughts. Jess didn’t argue, or indeed give any indication that he had even heard Xander speak.

Xander, who was wondering if he could get Giles or Willow to make a memory charm after this was all over, made his way into Yale’s library.

Rory was still sitting in the same place that she had been when Xander had seen her earlier, but she seemed to have given up on Batman and was instead reading the kind of ancient book that Xander would expect her to be reading. “Rory!” Xander called, and was surprised to hear someone else do the exact same thing.

“Who are you?” Xander asked the blond boy approaching Rory’s seat. Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Rory and asked “Who is this guy?”

The other guy seemed intent on ignoring Xander completely. “There you are, Ace! You didn’t show when you said you would, and you haven’t been at the paper. What’s up?”

“Xander, this is Logan. Logan, Xander. Xander’s my boyfriend. Logan’s the guy who I was talking about, who wanted to show me the Life and Death Brigade.” Rory said calmly.

“Wait, you have a boyfriend?” Logan said, looking at Xander with a distinctly unfriendly look.

“Wait, you didn’t tell him you had a boyfriend?” Xander said, matching the unfriendly look and raising him a hostile.

“Why would I?” asked Rory, who seemed thoroughly nonplussed. “It’s not really something that pops up in everyday conversation. ‘Hey, Ace, want to blindfold yourself and stand in the vestibule?’ ‘Yeah, sure. I have a boyfriend.’ I mean, that’s not exactly organic, is it?”

“Um, Rory? The part that doesn’t crop up in everyday conversation is the bit about blindfolding yourself and standing in a vestibule. I don’t even know what one of those is. But people talk about their boyfriends all the time. It’s perfectly normal.”

Logan, however, seemed concerned about something else. “You don’t know what a vestibule is?”

Xander looked at him incredulously. “Really? That’s what you’re taking away from this conversation?”

“It’s kind of hard to overlook the fact that you don’t know what a vestibule is.”

“What? Are you for real? People can go their entire lives without the word vestibule even so much as passing through their minds.”

“Seriously, Ace, what are you doing with this guy?”

Rory seemed thoroughly confused by this entire conversation, which actually made Xander feel a lot better. Obviously, she hadn’t had the faintest idea that asking her to stand in a vestibule (Xander wondered if it was a sexier version of a vest, because if it was then when this was all over he was going to come back and throw Logan into orbit) while blindfolded counted as flirting.

Fortunately, this whole thing was prevented from going any further by the appearance of a librarian who suggested in no uncertain terms that they should take their conversation outside. Xander was only too happy to comply. “Come on Rory, we need to get back to the Hollow anyway.”

Logan, however, didn’t seem to be so keen on the idea. “What? No she doesn’t. She has class this afternoon.”

“Trust me, little guy, this is more important.”

Logan, who didn’t seem best pleased to be called little by someone who was maybe an inch taller than him, looked like he was about to argue. However, he was cut off when someone else said something.

“He’s right, Rory.” Jess said seriously. “It’s about Dawn. She’s… she’s not doing so well.”

Rory’s eyes went wide at this, and she instantly headed towards the car without a backward look at Logan. Xander, however, couldn’t resist waving a hand at him, shooing him much as one might a recalcitrant puppy. Logan, for his part, seemed perfectly happy to stand there and fume silently.

“So, what’s going on with Dawn?” Rory asked anxiously.

“She’s not actually Dawn.” Xander was watching Rory carefully as he said this, and if there wasn’t even the slightest indication of self-consciousness which might suggest that Rory also wasn’t who she should be. She just seemed upset, and on edge, and clearly surprised that Xander was talking to her about this with Jess around. 

“Does Jess know?”

Xander nodded. “He kind of figured it out by himself. Well, that there was something wrong with her, at least. I filled in the rest.”

“How are you doing?” Rory said, turning to Jess. “I know it can be… kind of a shock. And you’ve had it all dumped on you at once, too.”

“Oh, you know.” Jess said with a shrug and wry smile. “It explains a fair amount about the world that I’ve always suspected.”

“And on that not-at-all depressing note, I feel that I should mention that there are also good witches and nice demons.” Xander pointed out.

“And also the kind that replace people’s girlfriends.”

Xander sighed. “Sadly. Anyway, we’re here.”

Wesley was waiting for them at the gate. “I’ve got a room ready, and the Slayers all know what’s going on. She doesn’t expect a thing.”

“Right.” Xander said. “So, Wes, you want to sit in?”

Wesley looked like he was going to argue, presumably on the basis that he was on holiday and that he had never actually met Dawn and that he worked for Wolfram and Hart, but then he shrugged and said “Sure.”

So it was that the four of them walked down to the room that Wesley had hurriedly prepared, past the Slayers who were loitering in the halls and definitely not being prepared to rush in should the need arrive.

“Finally!” Dawn said. “What’s going on? Wes wouldn’t tell me anything, and- oh. Jess, what are you doing here?”

“Never mind that. What’s she up to?” Xander said brusquely.

Dawn looked at him, waiting for him to go on. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to, she said “Uh, Xan? If you’re going to ask questions, you might want to give a little context first. Because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Wesley looked away and tried not to smile. Apparently Xander really was just that bad at interrogating.

“Yelena.” Xander said impatiently. “We saw the footage from Wolfram and Hart. We know she was there, and we know that you’re not Dawn. So, what’s she up to?”

Dawn blinked in surprise. “You figured all that out, huh?”

Xander nodded.

Dawn looked at Rory. “Well, I guess that’s our cover blown.”


	12. Chapter Twelve

Xander watched Rory. He didn’t do it because he wasn’t entirely sure that she was actually Rory, or because he’d just taken her into a room with a possibly dangerous doppelgänger-type thing. He watched her instinctively, whenever he was around her, just because she was Rory and he was Xander.

So, when fake-Dawn looked at her and said “Well, I guess that’s our cover blown”, Xander was perfectly able to see the expression that not only covered her entire face but also spread to the rest of her body as well.

It wasn’t the expression that you generally saw, when a Big Bad suddenly revealed that were actually a Big Bad, as opposed to, say, a tiny kitten (that had actually happened to Xander once. It still gave him nightmares). It was surprise. Not just surprise that Dawn would give in so easily, but surprise at what she was saying. She looked completely astonished that Dawn could even think that the pair of them were in cahoots. She looked shocked.

So either Rory was a much, much better actress than Xander would ever have suspected, or being an evil clone made her a better actress (which he doubted, because otherwise he wouldn’t have developed his own suspicions about her) or she genuinely didn’t have a clue what Dawn was talking about. Although Xander would be the first to admit that he was biased when it came to Rory, he was inclined to think that it was the third option.

“What?” Rory said. It wasn’t a protestation, which would’ve sounded too much like a denial. It was just a word that slipped out past her lips. “What are you talking about?”

Dawn looked at her, and shrugged. “If that’s the way you want to play it. Anyway, I’m not telling you anything.”

Then she began to beep.

~*~

Although Buffy had sent the footage Angel had shown her to Xander first, because what with him living next to Dawn on the other side of the country he was obviously the best person to deal with it, she then showed it to the other Scoobies.

Willow didn’t recognise her, and neither did Andrew or Kennedy or any of the Slayers. Then she showed it to Giles, who sat through the entire thing without moving or even blinking. When it was done, he silently got up and left the room. Buffy thought about following him, but she figured that he was probably going to library to go and research, and besides Xander hadn’t called her back and she was worried.

~*~

As it turned out, Giles wasn’t going to the library, because he knew exactly who the woman in the footage was. He also knew that, under this very roof, there was someone who knew much, much more about the null magician Yelena than he did.

So, Giles walked into Ethan’s room. The ex-chaos mage looked up, surprised. “I thought you guys were keen on knocking, what with being the good guys and all.”

Giles ignored him. “Tell me everything you know about Yelena.”

Ethan, who either didn’t notice the slightly murderous tone that had crept into Giles’ voice or just didn’t care, said “I told you, Ru. Where’s the fun if I tell you everything you need to know? I’m sure your massive library and incredible memory and ridiculous resources will be able to find what you need eventually.”

Ethan was not a small man, but Giles managed to pick him up by the front of his shirt and slam him into a wall without too much effort. “I’m not going to ask again.” Giles said icily.

Ethan could have broken out of the grip (you can’t really spend years with army people without learning a trick or two) but he didn’t. “What makes you think I know anything?”

“You’re Ethan bloody Rayne. You always know more than you let on. So tell me what you know about her, and tell me now.”

“Why don’t you put me down, Ripper, and then we’ll talk?”

“No. if I put you down, then you’ll try and weasel your way out of this, just like you always, do. So you’re going to talk, and you’re going to talk now, and if anything you say is a lie then so help me-“

Ethan sighed, and brought his arms up and pushed away Giles’ hands. Then he put a hand on Giles’ chest and pushed. Not hard, not even enough to make him stagger, but enough that Giles took a step backwards.

Giles stepped forward again, of course, ready to beat seven kinds of hell out of Ethan, but for some reason his leg wouldn’t move forward. He looked down, at least as much as he was able. He saw, to his astonishment, that his clothes had turned to stone.

Ethan dusted of his clothes. “You remember that nest of gargoyles Xander killed a while ago? You know, the ones that you hid in the basement because you couldn’t figure out what to do with the bodies after they turned back to stone? Well, a little known fact about gargoyle stone is that if you take a sliver of it and then infuse it with just a touch of magic, it turns stuff to stone. Stuff like clothes. Really, Giles, you shouldn’t make a chaos mage do the laundry, even if he is reformed.”

“How-“

“-did I get my magic back? Oh, I asked Wolfram and Hart. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Giles wondered if he had heard correctly. Seeing Ethan’s expectant expression, as though he actually believed that at any second Giles would thank him, made him think he had. “What on Earth makes you think that I’d be grateful that you stabbed me in the back?”

“Because the deal I made with them was that I'd pass along some information every now and then. Like the fact that that pesky demon clan who persists in using baby souls to make drugs was in the process of negotiating with us to give up the people who actually buy those things.”

“What? We would never make…” Giles trailed off. “You lied to them.”

Ethan clapped slowly. “Now he gets it. As a result, Wolfram and Hart is scrambling to make sure all its clients knows to avoid that clan, and the clan will lose its funding so it can't move its operations every couple of days and then your Slayers will actually be able to find them. _And_ I got my magic back for that, too. I mean, for lawyers, they don’t exactly make good contracts.”

“When did you do this, exactly?” Giles said. Normally, if Ethan wasn’t being watched by I'm personally, dozens of Slayers were around to make sure that he didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to.

Ethan ostentatiously looked at his watch. “About an hour ago. Not bad for a morning’s work, eh?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Giles said, knowing even as he spoke that it was a futile question. Ethan wasn’t the type of person to share what he was doing, not ever. Not even if it was, for once in his life, something that wasn’t outright chaotic.

“Because you don’t trust me, so why would I?” Ethan said. Even though his voice was light, Giles got the impression that was the crux of the issue. Of course, it was kind of hard to trust someone who had just turned his clothes to stone.

“Right, yes, I’m terribly sorry for thinking that you’re a lying toad just because of repeated supporting evidence. Now, you know that if I call dozens of Slayers will come in and take you down?”

“Really, Ru, I thought better of you. I put gargoyle stone in the laundry. If they try, they’ll be just as stony as you are. Then I’ll walk out and you’ll be stuck like that until Willow gets better.”

Giles sighed. He didn’t want to spend who-knew-how-long stuck like this. Not just because he needed to be out there trying to find out what Yelena was up to and what she had done with Dawn, although of course that was true. He also didn’t want to stay like this because… well, it chafed. “Fine. What do you want?”

“What do I want? I want to have this conversation, with as few snide digs at each other as we can manage, and then I want to leave this place and not come back. I don’t want anyone to follow me – not you, not your Slayer, not even your witch. And then, if we ever see each other again, I want us to act as though we were complete strangers, as though we had never met before. _That’s_ what I want, Rupert. What do you say?”

Giles didn’t like that idea. Letting Ethan loose on the world, with his magic, with everything he knew about the Council and how it ran was about as far from a good idea as he could imagine. But he didn’t have much of a choice – it wasn’t as though he could force Ethan to tell him anything, and he needed the information. Plus, if Ethan really had put gargoyle stone in the laundry, then it wasn’t as though anyone could actually stop him from leaving, if he wanted to. “Fine. Fine! After this, you can get out and I won’t ever have to see you again.”

Ethan settled himself into a chair. “Fine by me. Why don’t you tell me what Yelena’s done to get you all riled up like this?”

Giles told him, as succinctly as possible. Ethan sat there, listening, and he didn’t say anything until about a minute after Giles had finished speaking. When he finally spoke, he didn’t say what Giles had expected him to. “Dawn’s not human, is she? She’s got to be some kind of magical nexus or something, right?”

“Something like that.” Giles said, reluctant to tell a man who specialised in transportation and transformation magic that Dawn had once been a ball of energy capable of breaking down the barriers between dimensions and had been turned human.

Ethan didn’t seem to mind that Giles was withholding information. “That explains the power drain at the law firm, at least.”

Giles blinked. He had assumed that Yelena had something to do with the drain, given that it happened right after she walked into Dawn, but he had thought that it was a cover-up, a distraction, so that they wouldn’t realise what she had done with Dawn until it was too late (too late for what was the question he was here to answer). He hadn’t thought that Yelena touching Dawn had actually caused the drain in the first place. “Does it?”

Ethan didn’t answer directly. “When I was first… employed by Finn and the others, Yelena wasn’t there. Instead, there were a couple of shamans hopped up on black magic. Powerful stuff. They were supposed to keep me in line, so I could use my talents in government-approved ways. It worked, more or less, but there were still times when I could lark off and cause a little havoc. I told you when I turned Riley into a woman, didn’t I? Anyway, no binding spell is perfect, even if you are so high on black magic that it gives a whole new meaning to dark-skinned.”

Giles thought about the binding spell that he had placed on Willow, when she had gone on a rampage after Tara’s death. It should have stopped her from doing anything, but it hadn’t stopped her from reaching out and getting Anya to let her loose.

“Then, one day a couple of years after I… joined the Initiative, Yelena showed up and said she wanted a job. They didn’t know what she was, where she came from, what she could do. So she showed them. She touched one of the shamans. Just touched him. You could _see_ the magic leech out of him. Not a pretty sight, especially once he started going into magic withdrawal right there on the spot. The other shaman wasn’t happy about that, so faster than you could say ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ he hurled a fireball. Didn’t do a damned thing. Didn’t even singe her clothes.” Ethan paused apparently to collect his thoughts, and Giles took the opportunity to ask a question.

“So she really is a null magician, then? Not just someone with a bent for bindings? I thought that null magicians had died out centuries ago and taken their art with them. How does she know it?”

“She’s not human, Rupert. At least I don’t think so. She eats magic. She doesn’t need food, doesn’t need to drink, she just needs magic. If she touches you, she can eat yours. She can eat spells. As long as there’s magic for her to eat, then she’ll stay alive. She didn’t rediscover how to be a null magician, Ru. She actually genuinely is centuries old, at least.”

“How do you know?”

Ethan shrugged. “Work with someone long enough and they’re bound to let a few things slip. She told me how they died, too. The other null magicians, that is. I didn’t understand it, until I came here.”

“What? Why? What’s here that made you understand?”

“Apparently, some tribe or other didn’t like sharing land with people who live forever and eat magic. So went on some big holy crusade, and killed them. Thing is, they’re pretty difficult to kill – most everyone has a shred of magic in them, and you know what it feels like when she takes yours.”

Giles shivered slightly. He remembered when Yelena had touched him, back in Stars Hollow. It felt as though cold had radiated from her hand and burrowed deep into his chest. He felt as though he would never be warm again.

“Yeah. Imagine trying to kill someone who can make you feel like that with a touch. On top of that, they’re just bloody difficult to kill. The tribe found a way though. She said they dug up some ancient artefact. A scythe, they called it. I think you know the one I mean. Willow used it to wake up all the Slayers.”

Well, this was good. Oh, they didn’t know what Yelena was up to, or what she wanted Dawn for, but they knew what she was and how to kill, and even better they had the weapon at hand. Assuming Ethan was telling the truth, which was always doubtful. But it wasn’t as thought they had anything better to go on. Giles had been trying to find out about null magicians for months, and hadn’t gotten anywhere. If Yelena really had been around for centuries, she could probably have made sure that any records of her kind got erased. That would explain the dearth of information.

“It’s why magic doesn’t work so well in Connecticut.” Ethan added, derailing Giles’ thoughts. “That’s where the null magicians used to live, and only magic is only beginning now to creep back in.”

That fit in, too. It explained why Willow had had to personally supervise the spells on Coffee Lion house – even why the memory charm on Rory hadn’t held, because the spell should have been strong enough to withstand even seeing Sunnydale fall into a crater. Although Ethan was about as unreliable as anyone could be, Giles was inclined to believe him in this particular instance. His story hung together too well to be an off-the-cuff lie, and he hadn’t had enough time to come up with the details to flesh out any lie he might tell. No, Giles thought, he was telling the truth.

“Right then!” Ethan said cheerily. “Now you know everything I do about Yelena. I think that fulfils my side of the bargain, so I’m off. Toodles!”

Before Giles even had a chance to remind Ethan that he was still stuck in stone, Ethan was gone. Giles cursed silently under his breath before a paper aeroplane came sailing serenely into the room, only to unfold at Giles feet. There was a spell written on it, and underneath that it said “You thought I forgot, didn’t you?”

~*~

People didn’t often beep. That was generally the province of microwaves, or mobile phones. But Dawn was most definitely beeping. In fact, she looked rather self-satisfied about it.

Neither Jess nor Xander knew what to make of this development. Jess was feeling rather overwhelmed by the whole situation, and didn’t feel up to doing anything more complicated than standing and staring at someone who looked like his girlfriend. It said a lot about his frame of mind that he was wondering Dawn beeped too. Xander was just nonplussed.

But Wesley wasn’t. He’d seen this before, recently. Suddenly, everything came together in his head.

Duplicates of people. People who beeped. Shooting a something he had thought was his father. Cyborgs attacking Shannon and killing her Watcher. Cyborgs going after Angel.

“Everyone get out!” Wesley roared. “She’s going to explode!”


	13. Chapter Thirteen

A common civilian reaction to being told that something is going to explode is to panic, and try and get out the room as fast as possible, generally tripping over chairs as they did so.

Jess didn’t react like that, probably because the day he’d been having was so incredible that his brain just refused to wrap his head around the fact that the person (or thing, or whatever. He wasn’t even sure what the right description was) who looked like his girlfriend was going to explode. So he just stood there, dumbly, until Xander tackled him to the floor as he dove for cover. Wesley had already grabbed Rory and taken her out of the room.

Instead of the explosion that Xander had been waiting for, though, he just heard a faint fizzing sound, as you might hear if you loosen the lid of an over-carbonated drink. Warily, Xander peered over the top of the table he was hiding behind.

Dawn was still sitting there. She wasn’t beeping, but she was staring at her stomach as though she had never seen it before. This, Xander thought, made a fair amount of sense, because her stomach was smoking. That is to say, smoke was coming out of it. if that was the explosion that Wesley had warned about, then Xander needed to have a conversation with him about what an explosion was actually like.

Dawn frowned. “That’s some heartburn.” 

Then, Xander thought, it looked as though Dawn was a television screen dissolving into static. It was difficult to focus on her, but that wasn’t really a problem because there didn’t seem to be much to focus on. When it finally resolved itself, Dawn wasn’t sitting there anymore.

Instead, it looked something like a biker wearing a really form-fitting mask. Xander found that he didn’t, under any circumstances, want to look under that mask. Fortunately, it seemed to be disintegrating, so that wasn’t really a problem.

“You can get off now.” Jess said dully.

“Oh, yeah. Right.” Xander hauled himself upright. “Wes!”

“I’m right here.” Wesley said mildly from the doorway. “There’s no need to yell.”

“Oh. So, you know what… um, I don’t even know what to call…” he gestured vaguely at the body “…do you know what it is?”

Wesley nodded. “It’s a cyborg. The same type that impersonated my father. I imagine that they are also behind the death of Shannon’s Watcher.”

“Thought so.” Xander said.

“Did you? That’s great. Maybe you can even fill me in while you’re at it, because there’s a young woman here who, assuming the cyborg wasn’t lying, isn’t human either. And you haven’t actually told me who this Yelena that you’ve mentioned is yet.”

“I’m not a cyborg, or whatever that thing is. I swear.” Rory said quietly. She seemed like she was on the verge of a panic attack. Xander, who had first-hand experience of evil and not-so-evil robots, couldn’t tell if she was human or not. All he saw was his girlfriend, who had the same expression on her face when she had realised that she was turning into a vampire. He didn’t know how a cyborg couldn’t know that it was a cyborg (not-Dawn obviously had) or even what the point in that would be, but it was the only reason that he had. He just couldn’t accept that someone with that expression, with _Rory’s_ expression, could just lie to him like that.

Wesley, however, didn’t seem to believe her. “I don’t believe you. That cyborg even _said_ that you’re one of them.”

Rory ignored him, although Xander could see how much trouble that caused her – after all, he was sure that the exact same thought was running through her head, and knowing Rory it was driving her to the edge of a panic attack. She just looked at Xander, as though he was the entire world. “I’m not a cyborg. I… I’m just not. I remember things. I remember when you first told me you loved me. I remember our first kiss. I remember thinking you were dead. I remember that time that we-“

“Yes!” Xander interrupted, not wanting that sentence to go any further, at least not with people nearby. “I get it, and I want to believe you. I do. But you have been acting oddly. Rory, you don’t drink tea and you sure as hell don’t read comics. I want to believe that it’s just you being a little quirky, because let’s face it you’re plenty quirky as it is, and that not-Dawn was just lying. But I can’t.”

“I have a question.” Jess said slowly. He was fully aware that he didn’t have all the information here, and he was fine with that – the little that he had was crazy enough that he was perfectly happy not to be dragged in deeper. But something seemed wrong here, and he was fairly sure that he knew what it was. “Dawn was acting strange as well. I mean, noticeably strange. And you noticed Rory was being weird even before this whole business started. But the English guy said that one of them impersonated his dad, and I'm thinking that he’d have noticed if he acted… differently.”

“Still waiting for the question, Jess.” Xander said impatiently.

“Anyway, I doubt that Da- that she- that the cyborg was just meant to fizzle out like that. I’m guessing that there was meant to be some big explosion. And I'm thinking that, for whatever reason they came here, they were meant to be inconspicuous.”

“Still not a question.”

“Isn’t it possible that they’re broken? I mean, like not working properly? Don’t know why, but… well, they’re not, are they? Even if Rory _is_ one of… one of them, then she might not know it if she isn’t, you know, acting within mission parameters or whatever.”

Xander stared at him. “That… actually makes a lot of sense. Magic doesn’t work well in Connecticut, and you can't tell me that this isn’t at least slightly magical. It’s possible.”

Wesley looked like he was going to object though. He would have, in fact, had he thought that it would have accomplished anything. But, obviously, both Jess and Xander cared for Rory and didn’t want to admit that she might not be what she said she was. Plus, he couldn’t deny that the cyborg who had impersonated his father had done it so perfectly that he hadn't had the slightest idea that it wasn’t really him, even counting his nefarious plot to control Angel and threaten Fred. If Xander, who Wesley thought that he could safely call not the most observant person in the world, had noticed that something was wrong then that obviously meant that _something_ was going on. But Wesley wasn’t sure if it was anything so simple, so benign, as some magical error. If they were clever enough to make cyborgs capable of disguising themselves so flawlessly that he couldn’t even distinguish them from his own father, then he didn’t think that he they would make a mistake like that.

But he didn’t say anything.

“But…” Rory looked like she was going to cry. “I can’t be a cyborg. I just can't.”

Xander would have said something – he didn’t have the faintest idea what – but, right at that moment, his phone rang.

“Um.” He said awkwardly. “It’s Buffy. Um, I should probably, uh, take it.” No one made any move to get out of the room. “Okay.” He answered the phone and said “Hey, Buff. Really not a good time. And I mean, really, really not a good time. Like, not your average not a good time, but a time that’s… way worse than that, ‘kay?”

Xander could almost hear the eye roll on the other end of the line. “Yeah, Xan, I get it. It’s not a good time. But I sent you that file, and you didn’t call back, and it’s kind of a big deal, so whatever you’ve got going that makes this such a bad time, you’d better put in on hold for a minute until you tell me… you know, what you thought of it.”

Xander looked over at the cyborg which now looked as though it would probably come apart if he so much as blew on it. He didn’t think that Buffy would be pleased if he told her that a few minutes earlier, that had been Dawn. But he couldn’t exactly not tell her. “Well, see, about that bad time… we know who’s behind it. You remember that Russian lady I told you about, the one who worked with Ethan? Yeah, she’s evil. Evil and with an army of cyborgs, like the ones that got to Shannon’s Watcher. Dawn, I mean, the thing that we thought was Dawn… turned out to be not Dawn. Don’t know where she is or what’s going on, but… it’s not going to be of the good, I can tell you that much.” He didn’t mention that the jury was still out on whether or not Rory was in on the plot too.

There was silence for several seconds. “Well, that escalated quickly.”

“Yeah, you can say that again. So, um… I need some time to sort stuff out, then I’ll make my way over to you – I’m guessing this is all going down in LA, given that that’s where Dawn went missing. Is Willow up and running again?”

“Well, she’s not feeling like she’s had something amputated anymore, but she’s not going to be a massive help, you know? I left her trying to levitate a pencil.”

“Right then.” Xander said. “I’ll come to you, and you might want to call in the cavalry. And when I say the cavalry, I mean like _everyone you can get your hands on._ ”

~*~

Rory was dragging Xander around the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA when his phone rang. “Uh, Ro-Gil? As fun as it is seeing all these… things, I’ve got to take this. If you go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”

“Sure!” Rory said brightly.

Xander picked up his phone. “Is it time?”

“No. Not yet. They have realised the truth, however. The Dawn cyborg has self-destructed, but it managed to relay some information first. They are aware that I am behind this.”

“Right. So, you’re going to send the call out then?”

“It has already been sent.”

“For the record, I don’t like this plan of his. Hurting them – that’s not what this is about.”

“They will resist. They always resist. It is a good plan, and everything is already prepared. We just need a little time. This will distract them. They won’t find us before it is too late.”

“Whatever. When will you be ready?”

“Twelve hours. Keep her happy before then, will you?”

“Of course.”

The line went dead, and Xander went to find Rory.

~*~

“Hey, Buffy.” Vi said conversationally. “What’s up?”

“Nothing good. Like, literally, nothing good. I need you in LA.”

“Why, Buffy, I didn’t know you cared that much.”

“Sheesh, now I know why Xander keeps on going on about that serious face of his. I’m not joking around, Vi. Get to here as fast as you can, and bring every Slayer you can get. This is I'm-“ Buffy stopped talking when she heard the sound of breaking glass and screams on the other end of the line. “Vi! What’s going on over there!?”

There was no reply, just the sound of things breaking, a noise that sounded remarkably like flesh hitting flesh, and more screaming. Then there was a crunch, and the line went dead.

Buffy tried calling several other Slayers at the New York branch. None of them were picking up. It took several calls to several different branches, all of which ended in more or less the same way, before Buffy found out what was going on.

Vampires were attacking every branch of the Council, walking into the buildings as though they had been invited. Except that they hadn't.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

After Xander hung up, he looked as though he was going to say something. Then he thought better of it, closed his mouth and took a step towards the door. Then he thought better of that as well, and said “Wes. Take these two to the airport. There should be a plane there. Tell the pilot where we going. I’d tell you to tell him to step on it, but I don’t even know if you can do that with a plane.”

“Where will you be?”

“There’s someone I have to talk to first.” Xander said. “I should only be about ten minutes behind you. That is if she doesn’t beat me to death with a shovel.”

Wesley looked nonplussed. “Is that likely?”

Xander shrugged. “You never can tell. Anyway, you’d better go.”

~*~

“Hey, Michel.” Xander said pleasantly. “Is Lorelai around?”

“She is.” Michel said without looking up. 

Xander waited for Michel to continue, before realising that no, that would be too helpful. “So, where is she exactly?”

“ _I_ don’t know. This is ‘er inn. Why should I know where she is?”

Xander thought back a scathing retort and said “I guess I'd better go and look for her, shouldn’t I?”

“That would be for the best, yes.”

Eventually, Xander found Lorelai in the kitchen going over the menu with Sookie. At least, Xander assumed what they’d started out doing, because now it looked like Sookie was using Lorelai as a food taster. “Um, Lorelai? Do you mind if I have speak to you for a second? In private? Please?”

Lorelai turned, grinning, no doubt ready for a quip about how she was always ready for an illicit tryst. Then she caught sight of Xander’s expression and said “What’s wrong?”

“In private, please? It’ll only take a minute.”

“Fine, fine.” Lorelai led him to a room which Xander could only hope was currently going unused. He didn’t want someone bursting in. “What is it?”

“You know how I told you about… about my past? I mean, what I used to do. The gist of things.”

“Uh huh.” Then Lorelai blinked. “You're going to tell me about that _now_? You couldn’t have waited until, I don’t know, I had some popcorn or something?”

“No, I'm not going to tell you now. I don’t have the time.”

“Okaay.” Lorelai said slowly. “You’re being dramatic. Why? You’re not going to ask me my permission to propose, are you?”

“What? No! Of course not!” Xander said, genuinely surprised that even Lorelai would think that. “I just wanted to say… pfft. Why don’t I ever think through I want to say? I mean, I come driving all this way to tell you something, and then I can’t even get it straight in my head.”

“I’d say that you’re cute when you’re confused, but I don’t really think that would help right now.” Lorelai paused. “You’re cute when you're confused.”

“Thanks for that.” Xander said acidly. “Anyway. I wanted to say that… maybe that life isn’t quite done with me yet.”

“Odd way to put it.”

“Oh, trust me, I'd be happy if it was over and done with. Sadly, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen just yet.”

“So you’re telling me that you’re going to rush off and do something dangerous, and you wanted to say goodbye. That’s not ominous at all. Or clichéd. I mean, you practically have to go and get yourself killed now. You must realise that.”

“Wow. Your faith is overwhelming. Really.”

“I’m right though, aren’t I?”

Xander sighed. “Yeah. Except the bit about me dying.” He hoped she was wrong about that part, anyway. “Yeah. I’m going to go off and probably do something stupid beyond all mortal ken, like I normally do in times like this. I just wanted to say that… when I get back, I owe you a talk. A long talk, which you may want to bring a shovel to. We can even have it in a graveyard, if you like, so you don’t have to drag my body anywhere.”

Lorelai’s eyes narrowed. “Just what are you involved in, Xander?”

“Can’t tell you that. Not yet, anyway.” Xander took a deep breath. “I just wanted to say thank you. For back when I first met you. And about a dozen other things. And for Rory. Especially for her.”

“Xander-“

“Listen. I just realised that coming here probably wasn’t a good idea, because now you're going to worry and that’s, like, completely useless. So, hold off on any questions or worrying or anything like that for… say a day. After that, I’ll answer everything. Whatever. I just wanted to say... yeah, well. I’ll tell you when I get back.”

“I don’t even know what I'm meant to not be worrying about. You’re several states over from making sense.”

“Yeah, well. Sorry about that.” Xander gave her a weak grin. “Still, you’re cute when you’re confused.”

Before Lorelai even had time to think of a response, Xander was gone.

~*~

Xander drove just under the speed limit the entire way to the airport. Even though his talk with Lorelai had delayed him slightly more than he’d hoped, he still didn’t want to get pulled over. Especially not given the small arsenal in the trunk of his car. Not that he was planning on taking that on the flight.

The plane was already well-stocked as it was.

Wesley was waiting for him on the landing strip. “Took you long enough.”

“Nice to see you too. We all ready to go?”

“We are. Although I’ve got to say – not too keen on having a cyborg on board at 30,000 feet.”

“Even if she is a cyborg, she isn’t going to hurt us.” Xander said, with only slightly more conviction than he actually felt.

“Wish I was sure of that.” Wesley muttered as he followed Xander onto the plane.

~*~

Jess was taking the chance to pepper Wesley with questions about the supernatural world. Given that it was an almost eight hour flight, and Wesley couldn’t go anywhere, he wasn’t all that pleased about. Xander found that he wasn’t really bothered by that. Wesley might not be evil, but that didn’t mean that Xander forgave him for working for an evil law firm.

Besides, if it stopped Jess from pestering him instead, Xander was all for it.

“You talked to Mom, didn’t you?” Rory said suddenly. “That’s where you went.”

“It is.”

“Funny. I mean, if I am a cyborg, then I shouldn’t worry about her, should I? But I do. I also really want tea, but I know that I don’t even like tea… it’s really weird.”

“Did I ever tell you the story of Spike and the sexbot?”

“No.

“He had a crush on Buffy, and there was this robotics guy in town. Spike got him to make a replica of Buffy – only one, you know, actually liked him. You would not believe the kind of things she said.”

Rory giggled, then blushed. “Tell me.”

Xander snorted. “I dated Anya for years, and she was pretty up front about… that sort of thing. Even she went red at a couple of those things. If I told you, you’d probably melt or something.”

Rory’s blush deepened, and she looked out of the window. Whoever was making these cyborgs, Xander thought, was much, much better at it than Warren had been. Even this close to her, knowing that she wasn’t human, he still couldn’t tell. If he didn’t know her so well, he wouldn’t have a clue. And if Jess was right, and this one wasn’t working right – Xander wondered what Yelena’s plan could possibly be. With cyborgs like this, she could infiltrate government, do whatever she liked. She wondered what she wanted with Dawn and Rory.

“Would it be inappropriate if I told you something?” Rory said suddenly.

“Oh, you know me. Big fan of inappropriate.” Xander said automatically, before he remembered that even though this looked like his girlfriend, spoke like her, had her memories, it wasn’t actually her. It would kind of be inappropriate, he supposed. Kind of like cheating on Rory with her identical twin.

But Rory was speaking. “You remember after the Halloween party, when we were going home?”

“Uh huh. Buffy called to say that another Slayer branch had been hit. Why?”

Rory shook her head. “I mean before that.”

Xander scratched his chest absently. “Uh, I remember something about punch and Aquaman.” Xander looked at her suspiciously. “This isn’t the start of a dirty joke, is it?”

“No. Anyway, I offered to walk you home. Remember that?”

“Oh yeah. I said I’d be the gentleman and walk you home instead. What about it?”

Rory took a deep breath and looked down at her hands. “Yeah, when I offered to walk you home, I was kind of really actually asking if you wanted to, um, go back to your place and… yeah.”

Xander didn’t say anything. After the silence dragged on for just slightly too long, Rory looked up. Xander was looking at her blankly. “Feel free to say something, by the way.”

Xander blinked. “Hmm? I was just waiting for the punchline.”

“Um. There isn’t one. I did _say_ that it wasn’t a joke.”

“So, you’re telling me that that was actually the most subtle come hither in the history of mankind. And you’re telling me this now, while your ex is sitting right over there, and you’re probably actually a cyborg.” Xander laughed sheepishly. “Yeah, I thought proposing to a thousand year old ex-demon was weird. That just takes it to a whole new level.”

“Told you it might be inappropriate.”

“Why would you tell me, anyway? I mean, besides a perverse desire to make me squirm which is so totally not out of character that it’s actually kind of disturbing.”

“I thought you’d like to know. You know, when you meet up with the real Rory and you do some kind of dramatic rescue. So that maybe she won’t have to light signal fires or something.”

“You know, you’re taking this oddly calmly for someone who seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown a while back.”

“You know what? I think we’re probably out of Connecticut now. I feel more… cyborg-y. Not that I’m going to explode, or anything like that.” Rory added hurriedly. “I’m still Rory. I just feel more… pah. I don’t even have anything to compare it to.”

“You know, after all of this, maybe you should let Willow, uh, have a look at you. I mean, she got the Buffybot up and running, and… I don’t know, maybe you could be Rory’s stunt double or something.”

Rory looked away. “Yeah. Maybe.”

~*~

It was a long flight. Jess eventually ran out of questions, to Wesley's relief, but it was still awkward. A cyborg duplicate who had had intimate relationships with two of the other three passengers would cause that every time.

But eventually they landed. Wesley immediately called Wolfram & Hart, making sure that Angel and the others were kept in the loop. Xander meanwhile called a taxi, and they went to the Slayer building. It was busier than Xander had ever seen it, people bustling everywhere, people looking worried. He took it as a bad sign. Still, he and the others made their way to the room which Andrew called Mission Control. Sadly, the name had stuck.

“I’m telling you, Buffy.” Giles said exasperatedly. Xander got the impression that, whatever he was referring to, he’d already said before. “It won’t work. Yelena eats magic. Even if I _could_ do a locator spell, it wouldn’t find anything. It would be like sending out bait to find a shark. It’ll get eaten, and we still won’t be any closer to finding out where she is.”

“It’s got to be worth a shot, right? Willow thinks she’ll be up to it soon, and it’s not like we’ve got any better ideas. Even with Wolfram & Hart on board, we can’t find one person in a city of about four million people. We’re just not that good.”

“Actually.” Wesley interrupted. He’d put his time on the plane to good use. “I might have an idea on that front.”

~*~

Xander’s phone rang. He frowned. He hadn’t been expecting a call for another couple of hours or so. “Is it time? I thought you said twelve hours.”

“I’m almost ready. Bring her here.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Then he hung up. “Hey, Coffee Lion? You want to come meet a friend of mine?”


	15. Chapter Fifteen

Kennedy leant towards Buffy. “Is he allowed to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Have ideas. I mean, are we sure that he’s not the bad guy? Look, I'm just-“

“Kennedy. We’re operating as a skeleton garrison as it is. We’ve got no back up. We need Wolfram and Hart if we’re going to do anything.”

“Yeah, but-“

“Why are we a skeleton garrison?” Xander interrupted. “Did something happen?”

Buffy nodded tiredly. “You know those vampires who have been getting into our buildings? Looks like that was just the start. We’re being hit _everywhere_. It’s just us.”

“Right then.” Xander said slowly. “Wes, I guess that’s you're cue.”

“Well, we know that Yelena absorbs magic. So we can’t send a spell directly against her. So what do we do instead?”

“Spare us the Socratic dialogue and get to the point?” Giles growled.

Wesley flushed slightly. “Everything has magic, even if it’s just a tiny bit. Everything, that is, except for Yelena. If we can’t find her directly, then we have to look around her. Negative space. If we can find everywhere that magic is, then we’ll also see where it isn’t. And that’s where she’ll be.”

There was a brief pause. Then Kennedy said “One problem. We’ve got no one who can pull off a spell like that, not with Will out of commission. All your evil buddies, too.”

Wesley shrugged. “We have contractors. I’m sure if you give me ten minutes with our files we can find someone who-“

“That won’t be necessary.” The voice came from the doorway. Everyone turned to see Willow standing there. She looked pale, wan, and she had dark shadows under her eyes. She looked like she’d just got over the ‘flu. “I can manage it.”

“Will!” Kennedy was on her feet, although she didn’t remember standing. “Are you sure? You were having trouble floating pencils, and-“

Willow waved the concern away. “If I was at full power I could do a spell like that without breaking a sweat. Location spells are easy, even weird ones. But now – I can do it, yeah, but that’ll put me out of play. But I know I wouldn’t be any good against a null magician anyway, so… we might not have the time for Wesley to reach out. We need to move as soon as possible.”

Kennedy looked like she might protest, but Buffy cut her off. “She already has Dawn, and you know what that means. Plus Willow will be fine. She’s right. We don’t know what Yelena’s play is, or what she’s waiting for. But we need to go, preferably a few days ago.”

Kennedy muttered something under breath, and then said “Okay. Fine.”

Willow asked her to get some ingredients and give her five minutes.

~*~

“Your friend lives in a warehouse?” Rory asked. 

Xander shrugged. “It’s not exactly a warehouse. You’ll see when we get there.”

“I don’t see why we couldn’t have taken a taxi. Not that I have anything against walking or anything, but-”

Xander wrapped his arm around her waist. “We have time. All the time of our lives.”

Rory gave him a strange look. “I’m not exactly having the time of my life wandering through the warehouse district, thank you very much.”

Xander chuckled. “Just wait till you get there.”

~*~

Buffy snorted. “Wouldn’t you just know that she’s camped out in an abandoned warehouse? I'm just surprised she isn’t hidden away in some old factory.”

“Right then.” Xander said. “Let’s go. You got the scythe?”

“Of course!”

“Then let’s roll.”

~*~

As abandoned warehouses went, this one looked thoroughly abandoned. It looked like no one had even thought about entering it for at least a decade. “You sure this is the place?”

Faith shrugged. “If Red says this is it, then this is it.”

“Well then.” Xander gestured in front of him. “Ladies first. Especially when they’re carrying great big swords and enough weaponry to arm a small country.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “You’re too kind, really.”

Jess muttered to Rory “Are they always like this?”

“Don’t know. I’ve never tagged along to stop an apocalypse before.” Rory replied.

Inside, however, the Warehouse looked far from abandoned. This probably had something to do with the large mesh that covered the entire interior space. “You know, I don’t think stepping into something that looks like an oversized Faraday cage is a good idea.” Jess said.

“Thank you, Mister GED.” Xander said dryly. “Your point is duly noted.”

“Shouldn’t there be… you know, something here?” Buffy asked.

It was a good point. Not only did it look as though there was no one in sight, but there was nothing there. Not a table, not a chair, not even a conveniently obvious whiteboard detailing every stage of Yelena’s plan.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Maybe Yelena fooled Will somehow?” Xander said.

Then there was a crackling noise, like static on a radio amplified a few thousand times. Xander felt his hair begin to stand on end as the crackling continued. Light began to gather in the centre of the room, and the static sound grew even louder. Jess put his hands over his ears.

And then, suddenly, there was Yelena, standing there as though she hadn’t just coalesced out of a ball of light.

“Didn’t expect that.” Faith commented.

Yelena looked exactly as she had last time Xander had seen her. A serene brunette in her forties. She didn’t look like the kind of person who had an army of cyborgs at her beck and call. She looked more like a school teacher. She frowned. “You’re not my robots, are you?”

“Nope!” Buffy said cheerfully. “We’re the people who’re going to make you give me my sister back, and then I’m going to kill you with this scythe. Sound good to you?”

Yelena smiled faintly. “You think you can kill me, child? You think you can scare me?”

Buffy gave this some thought. “Well, yeah. See, we know this scythe killed the rest of your kind, so-“

Buffy stopped suddenly, because Yelena was abruptly right in front of her. She hadn’t walked, she hadn’t teleported. It had looked as though she had simply come apart, resembling something remarkably like a ball of lightning, and the recombined just a few inches in front of Buffy. “You only know what Ethan told you, child.”

And she reached out and laid a single finger on the scythe.

Buffy doubled over as though she had been hit in the stomach. Faith and Kennedy did too, at the same time. Xander was so preoccupied with this that he almost didn’t see Yelena's face contort in a rictus of pain. Almost.

Faith collapsed to her knees, and only Wesley's quick reactions saved Kennedy from toppling over backwards. Buffy, meanwhile, had her hands resting on her knees as she bent over. She looked like she might possibly vomit.

Yelena flickered rapidly. It seemed as though one second she was there, then she wasn’t, and then she was. Eventually, she seemed to stabilise. Then she bent down so that her face was level with Buffy’s. “You think that I will give you your sister back? The thing you call your sister is nothing more than a source of incredible magical power. One which I have absorbed. Do not think for even a single second that you can stop this. Your line is ended, now. As all magic must end.”

Xander wanted to leap at her, tackle her to the ground. He wanted to do _something_. But he didn’t, for two reasons.

The first and most obvious was that he had just seen her take out three Slayers with a single touch. Not only that, but it seemed as though she had just made every Slayer an ordinary human, having drained the magic from the scythe. Xander might not have any magic worth speaking of, but he didn’t think he’d be able to do much. Especially not if she could just come apart and recombine whenever she felt like it.

The second reason was that, for whatever reason, Rory wasn’t there. He didn’t know why Yelena would have delayed, given that Rory had been missing for days, but it gave him hope. If he could delay things even further, string them out, then maybe there might be a chance to do… something. He didn’t know what that might be, but there was always a chance. Anyway, it looked like Yelena was just about ready to do some villainous speech revealing whatever her nefarious plan was, and maybe, once he knew what it was, he could foil it somehow.

“Why?” Xander said. “I mean, I get why you're after Dawn. Trust me, you're not the first. But what do yo want with Rory. She’s not magical. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

“She has everything to do with this!” Yelena thundered. This wasn’t a metaphor. There were the words themselves, as they came out of her mouth. They were loud enough. But, long after she had finished speaking, the words seemed to reverberate around the room, growing louder. The echoes converged and changed, so that it sounded now as though someone was speaking really, really loudly through a poor quality radio.

And then, all at once, it stopped. “Perhaps you don’t understand magic. The Key, the thing you call Dawn, represents magic. Rory, born in Connecticut, raised in the place where my people once lived, the girl who has left that state no more than a handful of times – she represents… the void. The absence of magic. The world as it should be. Together, if I sacrifice them together, I can end magic.”

Okay. Xander had heard many, _many_ melodramatic speeches from various Big Bads about why it was absolutely imperative that they end the world, or raze a city to the ground, or rob that convenience store. Mostly, they were about as impressive as… well, Andrew’s threats, back when he’d tried to be a villain. But at least they made some sense, even if it was a strange and twisted sense. Unleashing hellhounds on a school prom because some girl didn’t want to go out with you – perfect sense.

But Yelena literally ate magic. If she was right, and she could end it… that wouldn’t end the world. Not even close. But then she’d just starve to death. As plans went, this one… wasn’t all that thorough. Generally, Big Bads wanted something, be it dominion or just being able to laugh hysterically as the world came crashing down around them. They didn’t want to just starve themselves.

“Maybe I’m missing something here.” Xander said slowly. “But what do you have against magic? I mean, it would be like me going out and destroying… milkshakes, or something. Why would I do that? Why would _you_ do that?”

Yelena's expression changed. Until then, it had been basically calm with just a dash of condescension, even when she’d been shouting. Now she looked sad, and lost, and lonely. Xander was fairly sure that the room itself got darker. “There were others like me once. Not many, but enough. My family. Then demons came. They were scared of us. We died. They died.” Yelena's head came up, and her eyes were angry. “If there’s no magic, there’ll be no demons. Do you know how many people get killed by demons every day? By witches? I can end that, now.”

“That’s genocide you're talking about.” Xander said. He might not be in favour of most demons, and he definitely didn’t like vampires, but wiping them off the face of the planet? Not a big fan. Especially given that not all of them were evil, not by a long shot. Especially especially not if it meant that Rory and Dawn had to be sacrificed for it to happen. Anyway, if Yelena was going to kill demons because some of them were murdering psychopaths, then she might as well kill humans as well and leave the planet to get run by apes.

No, this was revenge, pure and simple.

Before he could say anything, though, he was interrupted by a voice behind him. His voice. “Oh. Looks like we’re a bit late to the party.” said the cyborg replica of Xander.

Rory, the real Rory, looked around the room. At Yelena, at the three ex-slayers, at Jess, and finally at the cyborg version of herself who was looking at her curiously. “What’s going on?”

Xander leapt at Yelena. He took her by surprise, he could tell. He actually managed to bear her to ground. As he did, he saw Wesley go for the fake Xander, and Giles tried to get Rory away.

And then the cold started.

Xander had been wrong. Not about the fact that he didn’t have any magic worth speaking of, that much was true. But that didn’t mean that he could tackle Yelena with impunity. Just because he didn’t have magic himself didn’t mean that he was immune to her touch.

After all, he still bore the scar of his chest from Willow’s magic. The scar that had only ever half healed, and occasionally still bled. That was powerful magic. And when Yelena got over her surprise, he felt like his blood had turned to ice, like there were glaciers slowly colliding in his brain.

But that nothing compared to the pain in his chest.

Xander barely even noticed when Yelena got to her feet. He was dimly aware of her sending some kind of pulse at Wesley and Giles which sent them pinwheeling to the ground as though they had been struck by the hand of an angry god. He tried to struggle to his feet as Yelena moved towards Rory, but he failed miserably. It was as though the world was moving in slow motion. His blood pulsed in his ears, deafening him.

And then the world went white.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

Rory didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on. There two Xanders, two of _her_ , and Yelena seemed to have turned into some kind of crackling evil lightning lady. She felt like she’d just wandered into something that everyone else understood apart from her. As a result, when one Xander went for Yelena, and Wesley went for the other Xander, she didn’t move. She didn’t know which Xander was her boyfriend. She didn’t know if she should run, or if she should help one of them. So she just stood there, shocked.

The cyborg Rory, however, did know what was going on. She knew that if Yelena got to the real Rory, then it would all be over. Not only would Rory die, but she would too, as whatever magic (faulty as it might be) that made her run would be destroyed.

But she also knew something else. Several somethings, as a matter of fact. Separately, they didn’t mean very much… but altogether, well, then maybe she had a shot. Her. Not Xander, not Wesley, not even the Rory she was based on. She could save countless lives.

And if that wasn’t about the best thing that a cyborg built to go undercover and take someone’s place could hope for, she didn’t know what was.

So the first thing that the cyborg Rory did after Xander tackled Yelena was go over to the real Rory. She gently steered her over to where the cyborg Rory had been standing, before standing in the real Rory’s place. She was about to gamble everything on a single sentence that Yelena had said. 

_“You’re not my robots, are you?”_

If Yelena couldn’t tell the difference between a cyborg and a normal person – if she didn’t even know the difference between a cyborg and a robot – then maybe she wouldn’t notice that they’d switched places. That was the first thing that the cyborg Rory knew. Or rather, hoped.

The second thing that the cyborg Rory knew was that Yelena had obviously been in a great deal of pain after she’d absorbed the magic of the scythe. She had quite literally fallen apart. Maybe it was the fact that Yelena seemed to thunder and crackle like a humanoid bolt of lightning that made the cyborg Rory remember her high school physics lessons (which, technically, she hadn’t even had) but it made her think of a capacitor that was about to overload.

She figured that an exploding null magician would be quite a bit more dramatic, though.

The third thing that cyborg Rory knew was that she wasn’t human. Not only did she have quite a bit more magic than the real Rory, but she also had a self-destruct mechanism. If you wanted to help a null magician who was already close to overloading go just that little bit further, what better way to do that was there than exploding right in their face?

So the cyborg Rory’s plan hinged on two things. One, that Yelena couldn’t tell the difference between her and the real Rory. The second was that, when she exploded, she would just kind of turn into a flaky mess and disintegrate, like the cyborg Dawn had.

It started out well. All the commotion, and Yelena's steady crackling, overwhelmed the beeping emanating from her chest. Yelena moved towards her, rather than towards the real Rory.

And then Yelena touched her, and things got really strange.

~*~

The main things about magic is this.

It’s everywhere. In the earth, in the air. In everything from a grain of sand to a mountain. From a gentle breeze to a lightning storm. It’s in people, in demons, in the depths of the ocean. It’s everywhere.

Except in Yelena. Yelena ate magic. Even now, after the untold centuries since her people had been wiped out, Connecticut still had a lower level of ambient magic than anywhere else.

But, because magic was everywhere, Yelena couldn’t eat it all. Just like an ordinary person, if she ate too much her body couldn’t hold it. She’d absorbed Dawn, who was an incredibly potent source of magic. She’d absorbed the Slayer line, which had been going for millennia and was spread through thousands of girls. And she’d absorbed the magical remnant of Willow’s attack from Xander’s chest. Already, she was so full of magic that she was venting it out, so that she didn’t fall apart. She’d spent her time since first absorbing Dawn largely incorporeal, simply because it was too difficult for her to stay in a body.

And now, with the cyborg Rory exploding, it was just too much.

But another thing about magic is this.

It isn’t like other forms of energy. Sure, you can make things explode if you run a high enough current through it, or if you heat it up, or if you add a different substance to it. But once you exploded… that was that. You have an explosion, and that is all.

But magic… magic is sentient, to some degree. If you’re not careful, it can have a life of its own. Even perfectly crafted and perfectly executed spells don’t necessarily work out the way that one would think.

And this was far from a perfect spell. This was just an explosion, by definition an uncontrolled expulsion.

And, as life on the Hellmouth had proved, uncontrolled magic could lead to some _very_ strange effects.

For example, after the initial burst of white light, the room was lit by strobing pulses of light which not only had no source but didn’t even seem to be on the normal spectrum. Xander’s favourite was one which he could only describe as _xulb_. And, if that wasn’t enough, odd shapes came into existence and then vanished as quickly as they came. Three-sided squares. A triangle with three 90 degree angles.

Of course, the magic didn’t stop there. It also affected the people and things which had already been in the room.

The scythe, for example, began looking more like the kind of thing you’d see the Grim Reaper carrying. It exuded an almost palpable air of satisfaction about its new appearance.

Buffy and Faith sat up, and to the other people in the room it looked as though they were the same person – only different in every single way. When they discussed this later, they realised that there was some sense in it.

The same couldn’t be said as to why Wesley seemed to be covered in flickering, ghostly flames that did little more than feel like a warm wind. Everyone was nonplussed when Jess’ hair fell off and turned into a dog, which barked excitedly at his feet. No one was sure what to make of the figure that appeared next to Giles who resembled nothing so much as an ink outline of a man in a suit, who talked to Giles as though they were old friends, even though the language it spoke wasn’t one that any of them understood, or even recognised. Meanwhile, Kennedy seemed to be lit from within by some kind of strange light which made her resemble nothing so much as a skeleton. 

But everyone understood what was happening to the cyborg Xander, when he started disintegrating. And it made sense (at least, it made sense as much as any of this did) when what looked like a necklace made of something which seemed to be neither energy nor matter around the neck of the real Rory. 

And in the centre of all of this changing, shifting strangeness, there were two constants. Xander, sitting exactly where he’d been when Yelena had touched Rory. He didn’t change. Amongst everything which warped and altered with every passing second, only he remained the same.

And then there was the cyborg Rory, with Yelena's hand resting on her arm.

Although, to say that these two also remained unchanged wouldn’t be strictly true. The cyborg Rory seemed to be expanding gently outwards. Not as though she was getting bigger, but simply as though she was getting spread over a greater space. She seemed to be spread thin – the light was shining right through her.

Not that she seemed to mind this, if the expression on her face was anything to go by. Whatever strange magic had stopped her from exploding in a fiery ball of death was nice enough – but feeling as though she was expanding out into the universe was even better. It was amazing. She felt as though she could see everything, as though the furthest star was close enough for her to reach out and hold in the palm of her hand like a firefly.

And then she spread out so far that she didn’t think even that, because she _was_ the furthest star… and everything in-between.

Yelena, in contrast, was folding in on herself, getting smaller with every passing second. In contrast to the cyborg Rory, she definitely didn’t look as though she was enjoying the experience. In fact, that was something of an understatement. Someone being forcibly dragged to the underworld and then undergoing centuries of torment would probably enjoy the situation more.

Eventually, Yelena became so small that she wasn’t even there anymore. However, everyone’s attention was diverted from this by the sudden appearance of Dawn, who looked thoroughly confused – a perfectly understandable reaction when confronted with a small, yapping dog made of your boyfriend’s hair.

It was about that point that everyone decided that it would probably be a good idea if they left. While they hadn't yet been adversely affected by the magic, it was only a matter of time before something happened to them. Something worse than having your hair bark at your girlfriend.

Of course, leaving took rather longer than they would have liked. The excess magic in the air meant that sometimes, if you were lucky, you moved backwards when you wanted to move forwards. If you were less lucky, you’d bob up towards the ceiling, or the room would move forwards while you stayed perfectly still.

Eventually, after what may have been an extremely long or an extremely short time, everyone managed to make it out. They was something of a shock to be out in the world with normal light and normal shapes and normal rules of physics. Personally, Jess was just glad that his hair was back and no longer doglike. Having it follow him around might be a bit difficult to explain. The scythe stayed in its new shape, though, which was interesting, given that everyone else was normal again.

Only Giles wondered why the magical overload was confined only to the warehouse. After all, when the First had almost opened the Hellmouth, the effects were felt all over town – a simply wall shouldn’t have been able to keep it from leaking out. When he got back, he resolved to do some research. He couldn’t help but think that the unusual metal netting around the inside had something to do with it.

“What just happened?” Rory asked, with a faint note of hysteria colouring her voice.

“I’m guessing we didn’t just take a trip through Wonderland just for the fun of it.” Dawn added, looking equally confused.

Xander opened his mouth to explain, and then shut it again. “Long story. Like, a really long story, which would sound a lot better told around a campfire while we toast marshmallows, but seeing as how that’s not going to happen I'd settle for going back to the Slayer building and taking any and all snack food that I find. Then I‘ll tell you.” 

Buffy looked at him, and then at the two women. “Yelena the null magician went a bit psycho and wanted to use you two as a sacrifice to destroy all magic, and she brought you here with cyborg doubles of you two. And Xander too, by the looks of things.”

“Oh.” Rory said faintly. Then she poked Xander. “Why couldn’t you just say that?”

Xander looked indignant. “I was leading up to it. Stories go better with snacks!” 

“Dude has a point.” Faith said. “After… that thing that she did to us, I'm kind of looking forward to eating and sleeping myself. And now you're looking at me as though I just said something horrifying, B.”

“What? No! I just thought… all the other Slayers. The ones who were getting invaded by vampires? If Yelena did the same thing to them that she did to us, then, while vampires can get in without an invitation…”

“Look.” Xander said soothingly. Let’s get back, and then we can work out exactly what happened from there.”

“Right. Fair enough. There’s nothing we can do here anyway.”

~*~

If Xander had thought that the Slayer building had been busy before, then now it appeared as though everyone in LA was in there, bustling around, answering phones, gesticulating wildly with great big swords, playing Risk on the wall… on second thought, they were probably tracking the other branches that had been hit.

Buffy grabbed the nearest person. “What's going on?”

“Oh, Buffy! Where have you been? Like, _everywhere_ was getting attacked by vampires, and then there was this totally cold feeling that was, like, _awful_! Some of us fainted! But apparently all the vampires got shoved out of the building, so we weren't all defenseless, and then suddenly we were fine! Everyone was all healthy, even the wounded people are okay, the cold went away… the dead people are still dead though, which is, like _sad_. We’re still getting calls asking us what happened.” The Slayer paused, apparently to breathe. “What _has_ happened?”

“I’ll let you know when I’ve worked it out.”

Xander leant over to Rory. “You know, I thought I was overplaying it with the whole Valley Jesus thing… looks like I wasn’t being Valley enough.”

And Rory, despite everything, couldn’t help but laugh.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

Rory wanted to go home. She’d been traipsing around LA for _days_ with someone that she had been sure was her boyfriend – only to find that he was an evil cyborg and part of a plot that would get loads of people killed. She just wanted to get back to Connecticut, where everything was normal and things like that just didn’t happen.

Xander, however, said that he couldn’t go. He said that he could get her, and Jess and Dawn, onto a plane and in Connecticut in few hours (apparently he was connected with some organisation with some very fast jets) but he had to stay and help sort things out.

In other circumstances, she would have waited for him. But she was tired, and she’d just watched someone who looked remarkably like her vanish and probably die, and honestly she didn’t want to stick around and listen to whatever chaos had been caused by Yelena's assault.

So she kissed him goodbye and got on the jet. She talked a little bit with Jess, because Dawn crashed out almost as soon as she sat down and didn’t look like she was going to wake up soon. But Jess looked like he had a lot to digest, and Rory had already gone through the whole ‘Oh my god demons are real’ thing. So she slept too.

~*~

Xander didn’t have to stay. Buffy, Faith and the others was perfectly capable of dealing with everything, especially given that Willow had recovered now and could probably do just about everything that needed doing all by herself. Of course, Giles would probably like it if Xander wrote some kind of report, but there was no way that that was ever going to happen. Ever.

There were two reasons that Xander didn’t want to go to Stars Hollow. The first was that he was half convinced that the moment he set foot in town that Lorelai would pounce on him and he’d have to tell her about the supernatural and all of that, and he _really_ didn’t want to do that right then. But the second and far more compelling reason was that Rory had been put in danger just because she knew him.

Again.

And he couldn’t have that. He loved her, but he was putting her in danger, and there was only one way that he could think of to deal with that. If Rory went home, and he didn’t, then he had a little time. He could put it off, at least until tomorrow. Even delaying it a little bit seemed like a really good idea right then, even if it almost definitely wasn’t in the long run.

So he bustled around, trying to look busy so that no one would bother him.

~*~

The information gathering network of Wolfram & Hart was a vast and shady thing. As a result, Fred knew that Wesley was back in LA almost before the plane had touched down. She had thought about rushing over to meet him, but she still looked remarkably like someone who had been shot and she _knew_ that Wesley blamed himself for that, and he didn’t need to be reminded of it. Not on top of everything else.

Plus she’d probably end up kissing him or something, and that could well be all kinds of awkward.

And then there had been chaos as they got messages about Slayer outposts being attacked worldwide, and no one knew what was going on, and there hadn't been a chance for her to go and see Wesley. But then, just as suddenly as they had started the attacks stopped. Angel put a pause on mobilising the forces (although no one seemed to know where they would go, anyway) and decided to send someone to the Slayer branch in LA to see what was going on.

Knowing that, if he was going to be anywhere, Wesley was going to be there was no small inducement to Fred volunteering.

As a result, she was in the Slayer building and she had completely forgotten why she was there, and Wesley was looking at her as though he was surprised to see her. He opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it again. For her part, Fred couldn’t have said anything if she’d tried.

She dimly heard someone say “Isn’t that just the most disgusting thing you’ve ever seen?”

Thankful for the distraction, Fred turned to see Faith standing next to Xander. Both of them were looking at them, and didn’t seem to mind the fact that they had been spotted. “I don’t know.” Xander replied. “I think it’s kind of sweet.”

Faith snorted indelicately. “Hey, Specky!” Wesley started in surprise. “She wants you! What are you going to do about it?”

Fred had gone bright pink and was staring at her feet as though they were the most interesting thing in the world. Or, in fact, as though they were the entire world and there wasn’t anything else that she should be looking at. Like an ex-Watcher who looked like he’d been hit by a big, big club, for example.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, neither of them got the chance to say anything (or burst into flames) because they were distracted by the arrival of Ethan Rayne, who was wheeling in something which resembled nothing quite as much as a _really_ old stone coffin. He looked around. “Did I miss something?”

Although it definitely wasn’t the answer that he was looking for, Ethan did get an answer. Wesley took a few steps forward and gently lifted Fred’s chin.

And then he kissed her.

“Now, _that’s_ sweet.” Faith said, sounding very self-satisfied.

“Right.” Xander said. He scratched his chest absently and then looked down in surprise. “I’ve got to go.”

“Got some sweetness of your own to make?”

“You know, Faith, sometimes you should just not speak words. Or make suggestive expressions. Or downright explicit ones. God, Faith, just stop.”

~*~

Giles shut the door and turned to face Ethan. “What are you doing here? You were pretty clear last time we spoke that you never wanted to see any of us again.”

Ethan ignored the question and pointed at the closed door. “What’s with the secrecy? Oh, you didn’t tell them, did you?”

Giles crossed his arms. “We’ve been kind of busy. Maybe you didn’t notice. Now, if you could tell me what you’re doing and what that coffin is for before I bring Willow down here and have her force the answers out of you…”

“Hey! No need to be nasty.” Ethan said. “Not after I brought you a present and everything.”

Giles rolled his eyes. “Answers, Ethan.”

“I remembered where I heard the name Knox before. I knew his predecessor. Turns out these cultist guys aren’t all that original.” Ethan gestured at the coffin. “May I present the earthly remains of the Old One Illyria, God King of the something or other, blah blah blah. I’d recommend not opening it. Or touching it. Or going near it, come to think of it.”

Giles looked at the coffin, and then at Ethan, and then at the coffin again. “Okay. Thank you.”

Ethan beamed. “You’re welcome.”

“But I’ve got to ask… what are you going to do now? Because after lying to us about Yelena-“

“Wait, what now? I didn’t lie. I swear. Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. I guess out of some kind of twisted sense of mischief or something like that. I don’t know. But, for whatever reason, the information you gave us got people killed.”

Ethan scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Honestly, Ru, I told you everything I know. She told me herself… which probably explains why it was wrong, if she was evil and everything. I guess she’s been planning this a long time.”

“Okay. Let’s say I believe you – which is far from certain, by the way – why would you come back? You got your magic back, and you turned my clothes to stone. I'd say you burned your bridges around here. Plus you’ve said plenty of times that you’d much rather be just about anywhere else. So why are you here?”

Ethan shrugged awkwardly. “I always come back, Ru. Like a bad penny. ‘sides, this was always my plan. When I said that the next time we saw each other we should act as though we had never met before. I want to start again, Rupert. Forget all the baggage, all the stuff between us. I want to come back and be treated like a person rather than someone on permanent probation. I want my second chance.”

“I think you’re quite a way beyond that now.”

“Fair enough. But I’ve told you why I'm here. What happens next, well, that’s up to you.”

Giles didn’t reply for a long time. Long enough that Ethan genuinely thought about turning and leaving before a squadron of Slayers burst down the door to take him down. But then he said “So, I hear you want to teach magic. Ethan, wasn’t it? Nice to meet you.”

~*~

“Hey, Will? You know how you’ve got your magic back and everything? Well, I was wondering if you’d be up to making a getting me back to Connecticut. I, uh, kind of missed my flight.”

Willow looked at her friend coolly. “You know I just got my magic back, right? That kind of thing… it’s a pretty big spell. You know Rory and the others won't be there for a couple of hours. Not even Angel’s jets are that fast – although, speaking of which, you know he has more than one of them. What’s the big hurry?”

“Oh, girlfriend stuff, you know. I think I'm probably going to do something monumentally stupid, so I think I'd better go and do it as soon as possible.”

“That’s remarkably honest of you.”

“Yeah, well. You know me. If I'm going to put my foot in my mouth I like to do it quickly. So, how about it?”

“Fortunately for you, I’ve got magic to spare just now. One transportation coming up.”

Willow began chanting, and the lights dimmed. She walked over and tapped Xander on the forehead.

He felt a sudden rush of heat.

But otherwise nothing happened.

Willow frowned. “Huh. Never seen that happen before.”

“It didn’t work?”

“Obviously. Does this look like Stars Hollow to you?”

“No need to get snippy. Anyway, is it just me or is it really warm in here?”

“Are you joking? It’s freezing!” Willow said. “Okay, I'm going to try again, and if it doesn’t work then you can just take a jet.”

“Fine by me.” Xander took a deep breath. He’d been magical transported by Willow a couple of times before. It wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences. As he did so, he felt as though the sudden warmth that had rushed through him coalesced into a small spot deep inside his chest.

Before he had a chance to comment though, he was in Stars Hollow.

Rory wasn’t there yet. She wouldn’t be for a couple of hours. So it was perfect time to go and see Lorelai, so that she couldn’t immediately yell at her daughter for keeping all of this hidden from her. Who knows, maybe, if she had a couple of hours to calm down, she wouldn’t yell at all.

Oh, who was he kidding? Xander was going to get himself killed with a shovel.

~*~

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the National Man of Mystery.” Lorelai said drily.

“Hey!” Xander protested. “I definitely merit being international.”

“Well, that would depend on what you’re being so mysterious about, wouldn’t it?”

“No. It would depend on how much I travel. I mean, you can't judge a man by how mysterious he’s being, because unless he’s really bad at it you won't know what he’s being mysterious about.”

“You know, this conversation really isn’t going the way I imagined it.”

“I have yet to have a conversation with you that anyone would ever be able to imagine. This one seems surprisingly normal so far.”

“I’m guessing it’s going to take a strange turn really soon though.”

“Yeah.” Xander paused. “So, what do you think about magic?”

Lorelai blinked. “Well, I make a point to never believe it’s not so.”

Xander nodded seriously. “Right. Okay. Well, that makes things a lot easier.”

“If you’re planning on distracting me by pulling a rabbit out of a hat or something, then… well, it would probably work, seeing as how you don’t have a hat or anything.”

“No. It’s not that. I mean, not like I can do that anyway, but the point is, um, you know that big dramatic thing that I kind of didn’t tell you? Well, magic exists. And demons. And vampires. And witches, and cyborgs and snot monsters from outer space, and you’re looking at me like I’ve just sprouted a second head so I’m going to stop talking now.”

“You know, I don’t think there’s a shop that sells marbles around here, so you’re going to have to replace yours somewhere else.”

“This goes a lot better if you have a video. Or someone to demonstrate. If you wait here I can go and get Sammy and you can watch him give a firework display without any fireworks.”

“What makes you think that there won't be some nice men here ready to take you to a room with padded walls when you get back?”

Xander hesitated. “Because I'm a nice person?”

“Nice try. But seriously, Xander, what are you trying to pull? You make me worried, and then you come here and spin some outlandish story, and… what’s is going on in your head that would ever make this seem like a good idea?”

“Jess was easier to convince that you. You know what? I don’t care if you don’t believe me. I don’t care if you somehow managed to swallow the story that I was fighting crime since I was fifteen – with a sword and bow no less – but you don’t buy this. I don’t care if you paint me green and call me Oliver Queen, which is reference which obviously means nothing to you. I am going to find someone who can do magic, and then you are going to see it, and you’ll believe me then. And then we are going to have a long chat, and I'm going to tell you what I really do. And then… well, we’ll see what happens when Rory gets here.”

“You told Jess?”

“Really? _That’s_ what you took from that?” Xander rubbed his eyes. “Look, Lorelai. I’m tired. Can we just do this before I fall asleep or something?”

What Lorelai _planned_ to say was “You’re the one who came here telling fairy stories.” Punctuated by her poking him. She only got half way through, because when she poked him she got quite a large static shock. “Ow!”

Xander blinked. He hadn’t felt a thing. Except that that wasn’t quite true. When she’d touched him, he had felt the warmth that had been nestled deep inside his chest ever since Willow had tried to transport him stir.

A thought occurred to him, and he looked down at his hand as though he had never seen it before. Carefully, without being entirely sure what he was doing, he took that warmth and threaded it up through his arm and into his palm.

He was just as surprised as Lorelai when lightning danced over his skin.

“So. About that talk.” He said eventually.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

Lorelai was exhausting.

Not that Xander hadn’t known that already, of course. He defied anyone who had ever met her not to think that. But she was especially exhausting when you were already exhausted, and she was _especially_ especially exhausting when she was making you talk at great length about everything related to supernatural in any way, shape or form, including what seemed like a day-to-day account of what his life had been like since he had discovered that it existed. 

Xander obliged, of course. As much as he wanted to go to sleep right then and there, he was _absolutely certain_ that Lorelai would wake him again and keep talking. Ditto if he tried to escape. In any case, she had a right to know.

So he told her everything. He told her about demons and vampires and Yelena and snot monsters and Dawn. He told her everything that he had told Rory, and everything that had happened regarding Rory – although it wasn’t until afterwards that he thought that it might have been a better idea not to mention to memory altering amulet or the brief period she had spent as a vampire. But he was tired, and she deserved to know. He didn’t hold anything back.

Eventually, she ran out of things to ask and he ran out of things to tell. Xander didn’t have even the slightest clue what she thought about any of it – he strongly suspected that Lorelai didn’t know either, but then she had the rest of what was undoubtedly going to be a sleepless night trying to figure that out. Xander didn’t want to be there for that.

So, on the grounds that he might possibly pass out where he sat, he made his excuses and left.

He didn’t go back home. He had planned on going home, inasmuch as his brain was capable of planning anything at that point.

His feet, however, had different plans. Instead, he ended up walking to the little bridge that spanned the little pond and was, supposedly, where all the troubled people ended up.

For some reason, he was utterly unsurprised to see Rory sitting there with her feet dangling over the edge.

He sat next to her. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even give any indication that he knew she was there. Neither did she. And then, sometime later, they were both lying flat on the bridge and Rory’s head was nestled into the crook of Xander’s arm and she was moulded to his side as though she had been designed to fit that way. Neither of them were quite sure how they had ended up that way.

Xander was the first to speak. “Uh, I should probably say something.”

“Do you have to?”

“Well, I guess it could wait until morning but if I don’t do something now I’m probably going to fall asleep right here, and I think there might be some gossiping in the morning.” Xander said with a yawn. “Plus it’s kind of important.”

“’kay.”

Xander took a deep breath. For once, he had actually planned what he was going to say ahead of time. “There’s two things that can happen now, Rory. The first thing that could happen is we break up, which would be completely justified because, well, it’s not like this is the first time that bad stuff has happened to you just because you’ve met me, an-“

Rory sat up and turned to look at him. “Are you trying to Mary-Jane me?”

Xander blinked and tried to find some way in which that sentence made any kind of sense. He couldn’t. “What are you talking about now?”

“You know, Mary-Jane, uh, I don’t know her surname. Spiderman’s girlfriend. In the films Spiderman always tries to stay away from her because he thinks he’s dangerous, and it never really works out.”

“You watched the Spiderman films? I thought you… nope, that’s not the point. You should have waited until I finished my speech before you ambushed me with your surprising comic book knowledge that I’m sure you’ve been hiding from me. I had it all planned out and everything.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Or we don’t break up. Got to say I’m kind of plumping for that option. Because I love you, Rory. I can’t guarantee that there won’t be apocalypses or surprise cyborgs or… but I love you, and I know that much. And maybe that’s enough.”

Rory didn’t reply. Not because she didn’t have anything to say – there were thoughts sleeting through her head on the way to her tongue, but they just didn’t seem to manage to get there. She didn’t think that she’d ever been tongue-tied before. She was fairly sure that most of the inhabitants of Stars Hollow would bet money that such a thing was impossible.

Fortunately, she was saved from having to respond by Xander saying “Oh, and another thing.”

And then he took his shirt off.

At that point, Rory discovered that yes, she _could_ speak – not only that, but she could speak in a voice that was several octaves higher than it really should be. “What are you doing?”

“See, the thing about that weird magic explosion thing is that I’m not exactly the same as I was when I went in.” Xander said conversationally. How he was managing to sound calm while Rory felt as though her brain might possibly overheat was entirely beyond her. “Look. No scars. Not even the great big one Willow gave me.”

It was true, Rory realised. Even in the poor ambient light, it was obvious. And she definitely wasn’t going to reach out and touch the space where it had been, because if she did that then she was going to burst into flames.

Eventually, Rory managed to tear her eyes away and look Xander in the face. He was looking at her with an expression that said quite clearly that yes, he had noticed, and no, he didn’t mind. “You just took your shirt off to mess with me, didn’t you?”

Xander grinned widely. “I admit nothing.”

“So… no scars? Really no scars?” Rory said, feeling certain that looking for herself probably wasn’t the best idea right then.

“See for yourself.”

“Yeah… if I do that then there’s _definitely_ going to be some gossip flying around town tomorrow. Would you mind putting your shirt back on so I… just put it back on, okay?”

Xander looked like he was going to protest, then shrugged (prompting Rory to look away and hope that it was dark enough that he couldn’t see how heavily she was blushing) and put it back on. “So?”

“Hmm?” Rory tried to put her thoughts in anything resembling order.

“About what I said earlier?”

“Hmm?” Rory thought that maybe if she was noncommittal long enough that Xander would eventually drop enough hints for her to remember what she was talking about.

“About the breaking up or not thing…”

“Oh, no fair! Using partial nudity to skew my opinion is totally not a fair move.”

“Well, I’m told that turnaround is fair play…”

“Xander!”

“Sorry. Sleep deprived brain has now officially gone into overdrive.”

“By the way, I wasn’t going to break up with you. I mean, if I was going to break up with you then I would have done it after it turned out that you weren’t dead. I’m pretty sure I’ve made my choice nice and clear by now.”

“There’s something else.” Xander said. Then he paused as something else occurred to him. “Okay, so maybe two something elses.”

“Are you going to take your shirt off again?”

“Um, I guess that would kind of depend on how you react to the next couple of things I say.”

“Okay.”

“They’re kind of important.”

“Okay.”

“You might want to sit down.”

“I am.”

“Oh, right. Here goes.”

“Okay.”

“No, really, here goes.”

“Sheesh! Are you going to say anything?”

Xander took a deep breath. “At some point… not today, because the timing is totally wrong, and, well, probably not soon, either, because, um… well, the thing I’m trying to say is that I’m going to propose to at some point in the future. Just so you know.”

At that point, there was only one thought going through Rory’s head. It wasn’t a particularly appropriate thought, but then Rory had never been the kind of person to have appropriate thoughts with any degree of regularity. But this thought just kind of walked all over her other thoughts, and there was nothing else to do except for her to say it.

“What’s the second thing you wanted to say?”

“Oh, and I think I can eat magic now.” Xander waved a hand as though to say that this second thing was of no consequence whatsoever.

There was silence for several long seconds.

Then there was silence for a few seconds more.

The silence stretched to half a minute.

When it drew close to a whole minute, Xander let out a breath that he hadn’t even known that he was holding and said “You know, it would be really nice if you were to say something right about now.”

Rory said the first thing that came into her head.

“How about we go back to your place before you take your shirt off again, hmm?”

~*~

Dawn didn’t want to move. Her bed was extraordinarily comfortable, and what she really wanted to do was stay in it, fast asleep, and wake up some time next year.

But, sadly, biology always gets in the say of such lofty ambitions, and so Dawn was forced to get up and hunt for some food.

There was none to be found.

This forced Dawn to make a tough decision. Either she could stay in her house and retreat to the incredible luxury of her bed, and hope that some kind of miracle worker decided to pass by and bring her food before she starved, or she could go out and get some.

She waited for about a minute in hope of a food-carrying miracle man, but when there was no such person in evidence her stomach decided that it wanted food and that Dawn was going to go out and get some, comfortable bed notwithstanding.

Therefore, she opened the door at exactly the right moment to see Jess standing there with a brown paper bag in one hand and the other raised to press the doorbell. Both of them seemed somewhat surprised to see the other, although Dawn felt that she had more grounds for it than Jess did – after all, this was her house, so there was no point in being surprised to find that she was in it.

“What are you doing here?” Dawn asked, definitely not looking at the brown bag pointedly.

Jess collected his thoughts. “Uh, breakfast?”

“Oh, you wonderful miracle worker you.” Dawn snatched the bag from him and rapidly vanished into the depths of the house. Jess waited a couple of seconds, thinking that at some point she was bound to reappear or perhaps even invite him in. When it became clear that neither of these things were going to happen, he decided to go on ahead.

He found Dawn in the kitchen. Somehow, in the space of those few seconds, she had managed to find a plate, some cutlery, and eat half of the omelette that Jess was never going to admit that he had asked Luke to make.

“So I guess you’re hungry then.” Jess sat down opposite her and watched the rapidly vanishing omelette with a morbid fascination.

By this point, Dawn had already finished. “Uh huh.”

Jess searched for something to say. Sadly, the best that he could come up with was the rather awkward “How are you?”

“I’m fine. You? Not freaked out by the fact that I’m actually a ball of energy?”

“So no small talk then.” Jess said, eyes glassy.

Dawn shrugged. “Too early in the morning.”

“It’s nearly noon.”

“So?”

“Good point.”

“So, about the ball of energy thing…”

“Yes. Right. That.” Jess scratched his head absently. “You know, I thought about it. I thought about it a lot. All night, actually. And, well, basically continuously since I found out. And, uh, I’ve come to a conclusion.”

Dawn waited for him to reveal this conclusion. When it became clear that he was just going to wait until she asked, she crossed her arms and stared at him.

Jess smirked. “Well, my conclusion is that it actually kind of doesn’t bother me.”

Dawn tilted her head. “ _Really?_ ”

“Strange, huh? You’d think it would be the kind of things to send a guy running for the hills, but, um, it kind of fits in with this wacky world that I just found out about. And, you know, that kind of explains a lot. The demons and stuff, I mean.”

“I missed you freaking out, didn’t I?”

Jess laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “Yep. You’ve got the calm and collected Jess. Sorry about that.”

Dawn shrugged. “Oh, I think I can live with that.”

“I did freak out, if that’s some kind of consolation. I freaked out pretty badly. I mean, I knew that you had a pretty… unusual life, but that was… beyond. Completely beyond. But then I thought… it doesn’t really change anything, does it? I mean, you’re still you. Even if the you that you are isn’t really the you that I was expecting, but, um… I’m going to say some sappy stuff now.”

Dawn grinned widely. “I think I could stand to hear some of that.”

“I don’t like many people. Well, you know that. I think most people are idiots. And then there’s you. I like you. I’m pretty sure you’ve figured that part out by now. And I’m not going to throw that away just because you’re kind of not really human.”

Dawn nodded seriously. “You want to go and get something to eat? That omelette was nowhere near enough.”

~*~

Giles had an office. He didn’t use it much, because it seemed to make everyone think of him as some kind of headmaster and so they never came in. But sometimes, when he wanted to actually get some work done, he thought it was the perfect place.

Or at least, it was the perfect place right up until the point that Ethan came in without even bothering to knock. “Ru, I need to show you something.”

“What is it?” Giles asked, somewhat warily.

Ethan rolled his eyes. “I can show you here, if you’ve got a piece of paper and a pen. I can even try and tell you, it’s just easier with a diagram.”

“How about we start with words and see where we end up?”

“Fine.” Ethan sat down unceremoniously. “I hear that Yelena wasn’t staying solid. That means that she must’ve absorbed a _lot_ of magic. Enough that even she was having problems with it. Which explains why she didn’t start her spell with the girl from Connecticut as soon as she absorbed Dawn – she didn’t have enough control. It also explains the netting that was in the warehouse you lot went to. That’s used to stop magic from leaking out, keeps it contained – I bet that your friends at Wolfram and Hart have a few rooms with it. Speaking of which, you might want to talk to the vampire about the contract I signed… but never mind that.”

“Would the diagrams help you get to the point?” Giles interjected.

“Thanks, your condescension is much appreciated.” Ethan said acidly. “The point is, Yelena wasn’t in control of herself. Not after absorbing that much magic. She literally couldn’t keep it together.”

“And the point is…?”

“There’s no way she could have gotten to the warehouse without help. She wouldn’t have been able to make the cyborgs either, or keep them in check. Not even if she had full control of her power. Her gift didn’t work that way.”

“So you're saying-“

“I’m saying that she must’ve had help.”


End file.
